Justice is Black and White: Autism and the Justice System
By Michael Kelman Portney
Let’s cut the flowery bullshit and dive straight into the raw truth about autism and the justice system. Society loves to pretend it’s this flexible, understanding, accommodating machine—ready to handle everyone’s unique quirks. But let’s not kid ourselves: when it comes to autistic folks, the system often sees things in stark black and white terms. Meanwhile, the real world is a mess of gray areas, context, and nuance that get lost in translation the second an autistic person steps into a courtroom, a police station, or even an office setting.
1. Why “Black and White” Is a Problem
Rigid Legal Frameworks
The justice system thrives on binary thinking: guilty or not guilty. Comply or resist. Lying or telling the truth. But autistic individuals can communicate in ways that don’t line up neatly with these categories. They might take things literally, struggle with figurative language, or exhibit behaviors—like stimming or shutting down under stress—that the court misreads as dishonesty or aggression.Gray-Area Realities
Humans are complicated. A meltdown isn’t a simple refusal; it’s a genuine inability to cope with sensory or emotional overload. But the law likes to reduce everything to a single dimension: someone either “cooperated” or “failed to comply.” There’s no official checkbox for “had a sensory meltdown.” And that’s how the nuance of neurodivergence gets buried alive.
2. Black-and-White Thinking in Law Enforcement
Immediate Threat or No Threat
Police training often tells officers: if a person won’t follow a direct command, it’s because they’re resisting. This leads to a catastrophic misunderstanding of autistic behaviors—someone who’s nonverbal or severely anxious might not be physically able to respond in the moment. That nuance? Obliterated by the black-and-white rulebook.Assessing Credibility
In interviews or interrogations, law enforcement looks for “signs of deception.” Eye contact, fidgeting, inconsistencies in tone or phrasing. But for many autistic people, typical social cues are not a reliable measure of truthfulness. They might not look you in the eye, might echo the question, or might need extra time to respond. The actual truth can get lost in translation because the system sees only “credible” or “suspect,” with no in-between.
3. The Courtroom: Where Shades of Gray Disappear
Binary Verdicts
Guilty vs. not guilty. That’s the ultimate black-and-white judgment. Complex mental states—such as sensory overload, social anxiety, or an inability to fully understand the charges—get stripped down to the bare bones. The possibility that an autistic defendant didn’t comprehend the ramifications of their actions often isn’t explored in depth.Limited Accommodations
Sure, there might be token gestures like letting someone have a short break if they’re overwhelmed. But in most cases, everything still has to adhere to the standard “one size fits all” courtroom procedure: speak clearly and confidently, respond at the right moments, engage with the judge or jury appropriately. If you can’t maintain that performance, you risk looking “uncooperative” or “incompetent.”
4. Living in a Gray World That Doesn’t Understand
Societal Hypocrisy
Society loves to tout diversity—until someone’s differences don’t fit a neat category. Then it’s, “Well, we didn’t mean that kind of diversity.” Autistic people often exist in these ambiguous spaces where they’re fully capable in some areas and need support in others. That complexity is something the black-and-white systems can’t handle without conscious effort.Intersectional Pile-On
Add more layers—race, gender, sexuality, class—to an already misunderstood condition like autism, and you get a system that often fails entirely. The black-and-white approach doesn’t even come close to addressing that stack of intersecting identities. It just lumps people into the same too-small box and calls it “justice.”
5. Strategies to Push for Better Outcomes
Force the System to See Gray
Advocate Loudly: Demand training for law enforcement and legal professionals. Point out the gap in their black-and-white thinking every chance you get.
Legal Expertise: Connect with lawyers or nonprofits who actually get autism. They can help show the court that the real situation is more nuanced.
Redefine Compliance
Policy Changes: Encourage or lobby for protocols that acknowledge meltdowns, stimming, or nonverbal communication as valid responses, not defiance.
Police Training: Get on the local or state level to ensure officers are taught to interpret and respond to autistic behaviors more compassionately.
Humanize Through Stories
Real-World Accounts: Highlight personal narratives—like a meltdown misread as aggression or a mistrial because the defendant’s communication style was labeled “evasive.” Stories dismantle black-and-white assumptions by painting a vivid picture of why nuance matters.
6. Final Thoughts
When the world tries to cram everything into “yes/no,” “right/wrong,” or “guilty/innocent,” autistic people often pay the price. The complexities of being on the spectrum—and the reality that humanity thrives in the gray area—don’t vanish just because some legal code or law enforcement manual says they should.
Justice should mean context, understanding, and empathy—exactly what’s lacking when the system refuses to acknowledge the entire color palette of human experience. Until we tear down the black-and-white lens and build processes that reflect real-life complexity, autistic folks will keep getting shortchanged, misunderstood, and, in far too many cases, wrongfully punished.
By Michael Kelman Portney
