Perceived credibility of autistic witnesses
CRAE’s Laura Crane and colleagues investigated perceptions of autistic people within the criminal justice system.
By showing videos of autistic mock witnesses to a group of mock jurors (simulating a real courtroom setting), they found that the testimonies of autistic witness were judged to be as credible as those of non-autistic witnesses. Importantly, this was only when no information about autism was provided to the mock jurors. When the mock jurors were told the witness was autistic and given information about autism, autistic witnesses were judged to be more credible than non-autistic witnesses. This suggests we need to be careful about how we inform jurors about autism, in case it biases the way they view an autistic witness.
Read more about it here: https://bit.ly/2mdCJ2m