Exploring the life stories of autistic men convicted of sexual crimes

Research emphasises that autistic people are no more likely to engage in crime than neurotypical people, and are more likely to be come victims. That said, in the minority of autistic individuals that do engage in crime, research suggests that sexual offending is one of the more common forms of offending behaviour. Despite this, very little research has provided in-depth insights into what leads autistic individuals to engage in sexual crime, and how autistic individuals make sense of their pathways to sexual crime and beyond. Paying close attention to how autistic individuals use their life narratives to make sense of their lived experiences and understand themselves can elicit important insights relevant to the prevention of sexual crime for autistic people. The present study utilised an in-depth, qualitative life story approach to explore the diverse life stories of four autistic men with sexual convictions, from two UK prisons. The study aimed to capture how each individual used their life stories to construe their life experiences leading up to prison, portray and understand their sense of self, and anticipate what their future would hold. A narrative analysis of participants’ life stories illuminated both diversity and commonalities between participants’ life experiences and sense-making of those experience. The examples of diversity and commonality found in this study emphasise the importance of both recognising how autism can be an important contextual factor for some individuals who engage in sexual crime, whilst also understanding that practitioner must also be cognisant of the diversity between autistic people to be able to work responsively with them in forensic interventions.