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Criminal Behavior and School Discipline in Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth with Autism

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A Correction to this article was published on 04 April 2020

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Abstract

The objective was to delineate the prevalence of criminal behavior and school discipline in juvenile justice-involved youth (JJY) with autism. A sample of 143 JJY with autism was matched to comparison groups of JJY without a special education classification, JJY with learning disabilities, and JJY with other special educational needs (N = 572). Results showed that JJY with autism committed significantly fewer property crimes. With regard to school discipline, JJY with autism were least likely to receive policy violations, out-of-school suspensions, and in-school suspensions. Finally, regardless of special education classification, JJY who had a history of fighting in school were more likely to recidivate. Our results suggest that JJY with autism are not more likely to commit crimes compared to JJY without SEN.

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  • 04 April 2020

    The original version of the article has unfortunately contained formatting errors in tables.

Notes

  1. For the purposes of this paper the term autism will include autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Asperger syndrome (AS), Autistic Disorder (AD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) classification of Autism (AU).

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Funding

This project was supported by Award No. 2013-JF-FX-0018 (PI: ELG), awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, as well as by the Yale School of Medicine (Brown-Coxe fellowship to SH), by Award No. R305H140050 (PI: ELG), awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, and by Award No. 17-29-02384 (PI: ELG), awarded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Education or the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. We are grateful for the support of Catherine Foley Geib (Connecticut Court Support Services Division), Ajit Gopalakrishnan (Connecticut State Department of Education), and Peter Kochol (Connecticut Court Support Services Division) who made it possible to obtain the data used in this study.

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Author notes

  1. Alexandra M. Slaughter and Sascha Hein have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological, Health, and Learning Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Alexandra M. Slaughter, Sascha Hein & Sarah S. Mire

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Judy H. Hong & Elena L. Grigorenko

  3. Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204-6022, USA

    Elena L. Grigorenko

  4. Laboratory of Translational Sciences of Human Development, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Elena L. Grigorenko

Authors
  1. Alexandra M. Slaughter
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  5. Elena L. Grigorenko
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Contributions

AMS conceived of the study, participated in its design, coordination, analysis and interpretation of the data and drafted the manuscript; SH conceived of the study, participated in its design, coordination, analysis, and interpretation of the data and drafted the manuscript; JHH participated in drafting the manuscript; SSM participated in drafting the manuscript and interpretation of the results; ELG helped to draft the manuscript and secured funding. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Elena L. Grigorenko.

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Slaughter, A.M., Hein, S., Hong, J.H. et al. Criminal Behavior and School Discipline in Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 2268–2280 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03883-8

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