The Arc Resources to Inform Law Enforcement about I/DD

Voiceover

00:00

Welcome to The Beat—a podcast series from the COPS Office and the Department of Justice. Featuring 

interviews with experts from a varied field of disciplines, The Beat provides law enforcement with the 

latest developments and trending topics in community policing.

Today we have two guests, one is joining us in-studio, the other by phone.

Jennifer Donelan

00:20

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for this edition of The Beat. Today we are going to be 

introducing you to The Arc's National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability and we are very happy to 

have with us Leigh Ann Davis. She’s the Director of the Criminal Justice Initiatives at The Arc of the 

United States and joining her is Ariel Simms. She’s Program Manager and an Attorney at the Criminal 

Justice Initiatives at The Arc of the United States. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us. 

Ariel Simms

00:50

Thank you.

Director Leigh Ann Davis

00:51

Thank you for having me.

Donelan

00:53

We’re going to begin with Leigh Ann. Can you give the audience an overview of The Arc's National 

Center on Criminal Justice and Disability, and then explain what resources are available that you offer 

for law enforcement?

Davis

01:06

Sure, Jennifer. So we're very excited to provide information on the podcast today. Let me give you an 

overview of The Arc in general, because I'm sure officers and those in the criminal justice field are not as 

familiar with The Arc. So, The Arc was founded in 1950 and we are the largest community-based 

organization in the United States that are advocating with and for people with intellectual and 

developmental disabilities.
We serve all ages and people with more than 100 different diagnoses. Which can include autism, Down 

Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and other types of developmental disabilities. We also have 

a long history of criminal justice and legal advocacy within the field of developmental disability. So it was 

in 2013 that we received a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, that allowed us to create the 

first national center on criminal justice and disability, that really was able to focus on both victim and 

suspect, or defendant issues. 

This was a big win for our field because often the funding dictates that you can either focus on one or 

the other. So, this national center gave us the opportunity to educate law enforcement about both 

sides. And now we're able to provide resources for officers and others in the criminal justice system, 

because we also outreach to attorneys and different service providers, probation officers and others in 

the criminal justice field.

So, after five years of operation, our center has been able to create the Pathways to Justice training. And 

we've been able to train over five thousand people with our training. And we're currently working on 

developing an advanced course for CIT officers that would help them focus not only on mental illness, 

but looking at intellectual and developmental disabilities. So, we've tried to cover a lot of ground in five 

years that the Center's been around. And we're continuing to look for opportunities to provide outreach 

to law enforcement.

Donelan

03:16

You have been busy and that is an understatement. You know in the ability to be all-encompassing it is 

just wonderful. I think it’s understanding that’s at the heart of this. So, Ariel, I want to ask you. At your 

center, you focus on supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the criminal 

justice program. Can you explain what this is and how it's different from mental illness and why it's so 

important for officers to understand the difference between the two.

Simms 

03:45

Sure. So the disability community uses a lot of different labels and a lot of different language. So this can 

be really confusing for officers and for criminal justice professionals generally. And the language and the 

labels that we use change over time. So on the mental health side of things, you might hear labels like 

depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, psychiatric disability, which is the term that we use, mental 

health disability. All of these labels are related to mental health disabilities.

And then on the intellectual and developmental disabilities side, you'll often hear the abbreviation I-D-D 

for short. We use labels such as Autism, intellectual disability, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, cerebral 

palsy. And with I-D-D generally, these are life-long disabilities that impact a variety of areas of life, such 

as expressing language, ability for movement, independence, and self-determination. And we can think 

about psychiatric disabilities on the one hand and intellectual and developmental disabilities on the 

other as two parts of a larger, sort of, disability-wide community.
And they do have some differences that I'll point out for officers. So, the first is the onset of the 

disability. With psychiatric disabilities, those can come on at any point in a person's life, childhood, 

adulthood, late life, there's really no sort of rhyme or reason for when a psychiatric disability can occur. 

With intellectual and developmental disabilities, that onset has to occur during what's called the 

developmental period.

In the case of general developmental disabilities, before age 22, and in the case of intellectual disability, 

actually before age 18. So there's a difference in sort of timing and when the disability occurs.

Another piece that's different between these two, kind of, groups of disability, if you will, is the overall 

length of the disability. How long it lasts for a person. With psychiatric disabilities, these can be 

temporary, they can be episodic, they can come and go or they can be more chronic and last over the 

course of somebody's life. With intellectual and developmental disabilities, these are chronic disabilities. 

They last across the lifespan and they're generally not episodic or temporary.

A last kind of difference I would highlight for officers, and I think that this is the really important one, is 

the impact on intellectual functioning. With psychiatric disabilities, IQ or sort of general intelligence is 

generally not affected or impacted in the same way. But when we're talking about people with 

intellectual disability, the IQ or the general intelligence is always affected. And then if we're thinking 

about the larger developmental disabilities community, they can also have co-occurring intellectual 

disability along with another type of developmental disability.

Now, however, one more thing to even further confuse officers is that 34% of people with intellectual 

and developmental disabilities also have a co-occurring psychiatric disability, so sometimes it's really 

hard to tell, you know, what sort of disability that you might be dealing with. So what we tell officers is, 

don't try to diagnose anybody and, like, that's not your role. That's not what we would ever expect from 

officers. Instead, treat the people you're encountering that you suspect have disabilities as individuals 

and keep your response as individual as possible. But understand some of the basic characteristics of the 

disability community and the different parts of the disability community. For example, don't assume 

that someone necessarily completely understands your commands to them, would be a good rule of

thumb.

Donelan

07:26

I'm always in awe of law enforcement officers who as they approach a situation, they don't know what 

they're walking into. They don't know with whom they're dealing, they don't have a history, nobody 

hands over a cheat sheet and says, "Hey, this is who I am."

And they've having to make decisions in split seconds and to make sure A) they're protecting 

themselves, protecting the community at large, and protecting the person with whom they're dealing. 

What are, Leigh Ann, I'm going to start with you, what are the primary disadvantages or challenges 

facing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities when they're interacting with law 
enforcement and then, how does The Arc’s National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability work with 

those officers on how to deal with those challenges?

Davis

08:11

That's a great question. And we actively are working to try to simplify this issue for officers. So, we look 

at it from two different perspectives. And I'm going to talk about the victim's issues. And then Ariel can 

speak to the suspect, defendant issues.

So, one of the key challenges that we see with this population overall, and that I've been seeing in the 

past 20 years working in this field, is that many times this disability is really hard to recognize. We know 

that in looking at the total population of people who have an intellectual or developmental disability, 

that a very high percentage of those people can live in the community. And they don't need a high level 

of support. This means that their disability is not easily recognizable and it may take time for an officer 

to really become aware that a disability is present.

So, it's not until the officer starts talking to the person and getting a feel for how he or she 

communicates that the officer realizes that something else may be going on. For example, an officer 

may be talking to an autistic person who suddenly starts stimming. Now, stimming is a type of repetitive 

behavior that may be more common in people with autism. And examples of stimming is like flapping of 

the hands, or rocking back and forth or repeating phrases. And an officer who isn't familiar with this 

type of behavior may see this as threatening. When it's actually a symptom of the disability.

So, once the officer realizes the person may have a disability, he or she might think, well maybe there's 

something else going on here that I need to look into. So, that's one of the biggest challenges that we 

see because we want to be able to educate officers that there is an important step that might be missed 

when talking to, or questioning people with disabilities. Or officers need to know if there's signs that 

they need to be more aware of, that may be related to someone's disability. So, when they have this 

knowledge, they're able to ask more questions and they hopefully can be, they're able to identify if 

someone may have a disability and then be able to provide accommodations and supports related to 

that person's needs.

But I did want to touch on victims issues for a second because it's such a problem in the field of 

intellectual and developmental disability. And the reason for that is that they face such a higher risk of 

being victims of crime, and I don't know that officers are really aware of just how high that risk is. 

Violence among this population, it's widespread across the country. And it's often overlooked within 

society in general. We know the data from the national crime victims survey reported in 2016, shows 

that the rate of victimization for people with disabilities was more than three times the rate for those 

without disability.

And then NPR did a series of stories that highlighted a new statistic from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 

that found that people with intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted at a rate seven times higher 

than those without disability. And there was also a separate survey in 2012 that found that more than 
seven in ten people with disabilities said that they had been abused. So, while we have little data in 

many ways when it comes to people with intellectual disabilities in the criminal justice system, we do 

know that this population is at a very high risk of being victimized.

So, some of the things that we do in our trainings is help officers understand how to conduct effective 

interviews of crime victims with disabilities. And we're currently working with a partner agency to 

update national publications on this very topic. And I think that officers would be interested to know 

too, that there's model protocol that some police departments are using right now. For example, in 

Illinois they created a statewide protocol that provides model guidelines and includes information about 

investigative procedures and legal considerations around how officers can better serve people with 

intellectual disabilities who've either experienced sexual assault or domestic violence.

So, we're getting more and more information to officers in a number of different ways to equip them to 

better be able to serve this population. And then finally, I think officers need to realize that both the 

rates of reporting and prosecution of these types of crimes are very, very low. That's a huge issue that 

we continue to grapple with too.

Donelan

12:59

Why is that, Leigh Ann? Is it that the communication? Part of it?

Davis

13:02

Yes. Communication is a big piece to this. But I also think that people with disabilities feel like they won't 

be believed if they disclose or report a crime. Due to their intellectual disability, they're often not 

viewed as credible witnesses. That's an issue that this population struggles with due to stereotypes our 

society holds about people with intellectual disability. While it's true that they may need more support 

or accommodations to provide testimony, this doesn't mean that they aren't able to give strong, truthful 

information that can be used in court.

So, we really want officers to have a much deeper understanding of the barriers that crime victims with 

intellectual disabilities are facing, and know that their involvement is absolutely critical. Without their 

involvement, people with intellectual disability will never obtain justice. So, much of the time, violence 

and victimization of this population goes unseen in our communities. So, an officer's proactive response 

may be the only hope that the victim has.

Donelan

14:10

Thank you, Leigh Ann and Ariel. So that's the victim side of it and I find that information to be stunning. 

And, and quite frightening that we have so many victims that we don't even know their stories and no 

one's attending to that, so that training is so critical. But on the suspect side, there are also 
misconceptions that I know that you are working on trying to break down. For instance, someone, and 

this is a misconception, someone with a psychiatric issue is inherently dangerous.

Simms 

14:40

Sure. And that is a stereotype that is so common and, and not just in the law enforcement community, 

too. The larger criminal justice community and to the public, there's lots of myths and stereotypes about 

what people with disabilities really are and at the end of the day they're really just, just people.

Another misconceptions that we often see and for the sake of our work, we often divide the system up 

into these two parts, right? Victims issues on one hand, suspect issues on the other, but the reality is, so 

many people who are victims, so many people who end up going through the criminal justice process 

have experienced victimization in the past. So it tends to be more of a cyclical system or relationship 

where people are going in and out of these roles depending on where they are in their life. So that's 

another misconception that we try to address.

Now, if we're looking at sort of the suspect side and purely at that side, we know that people with 

disabilities and people with IDD are over represented in every part of the criminal justice process, from 

first contact with law enforcement who is being arrested all the way through incarceration and how 

many people are incarcerated. So just to give the audience a sense of how many people with IDD 

specifically, are incarcerated, they represent 1-2% of the general population, but up to 10% of the 

incarcerated population.

And going back to policing, we have some pretty alarming statistics that have come out in the past 

couple of years that really highlight some of the difficulties when people with intellectual and 

developmental disabilities are interacting with law enforcement. Between a third and a half of people 

killed by police each year, are people with disabilities and about 25% of those are psychiatric disabilities. 

And we don't know the breakdown of all the other kinds of disabilities out there because we don't have 

good data in this area. We're constantly trying to get good data and relying on the media to help us 

figure out what is the scope of the problem.

On the arrest front, we know that people with disabilities by age 28 face a 43% chance of arrest, 

compared to 29% for those without disabilities and as you can imagine, the greatest risk of arrest falls to 

men of color with disabilities. 55% of men of color with disabilities will be arrested by age 28. And that 

statistic is frightening on so many levels. But, also highlights the very real nature of human bias in 

policing, right? And in policing practice. And also the need for advocates like myself and Leigh Ann to 

really focus in on these intersectional identities that are impacting how the criminal justice system 

interacts with people with different marginalized identities.

And these statistics also highlight a very common problem when we look at the disability piece, that 

when officers are interacting with these folks, they don't always understand what constitutes a disability 

related behavior versus a criminal behavior and we've seen that over and over again in the media. For 

example, somebody who is deaf who is not responding to the officers' command, you know, the officer 
assumes that person is not being compliant, you know, or is being difficult, right? Even though the 

person can't actually hear the commands. With people with Autism, sometimes people with Autism selfstimulate, they have some sort of behavior they do to, kind of, calm themselves down when they're 

feeling anxious.

There's been situations where that behavior has been interpreted as drug use and people are arrested 

for that. We've seen it with the diabetic community and someone experiencing insulin shock may be 

interpreted as someone who is intoxicated. So we just see this kind of situation happening over and over 

where officers aren't prepared to identify a disability behavior versus a criminal behavior.

Donelan

18:34

Sure. This topic, knowledge and education and training seem to be so key to the issue. You know the 

best kind of news is good news. The next best kind of news is news you can use. So, what are the key 

messages and Leigh Ann, I'm going to start with you. What are the key messages that you give law 

enforcement that they need to remember when they're working with people with intellectual and 

developmental disabilities?

Davis

18:59

One of the key messages that we highlight in our training is that, first of all, people must be treated 

fairly and with dignity and respect. And that includes people with intellectual disabilities. And secondly, 

another message is to focus on crisis prevention first and not crisis intervention. And the reason for this 

is that, as we've been doing training over the past five years with law enforcement, we've seen how 

people define crisis differently depending on if they're an officer or a person with a disability, or the 

parent of someone with disabilities. And so, what looks like a potential crisis situation to an officer, may 

not look that way to someone in the disability field who is used to seeing certain types of behaviors that 

may look threatening to someone who is, doesn't have any experience working with people with 

disabilities.

So, we need to get on the same page about defining what pre-crisis behavior really looks like. And then 

lastly, I would say something that's really important in the disability community, is this phrase, nothing 

about us without us. That means that anything that is about someone with disabilities, should actually 

include people with disabilities. So for example, if a police department is doing a training on this topic, 

then people with intellectual disabilities should be included in that training so that this philosophy is 

being modeled for the officers.

It's an exciting time in the area of policing a disability, as we're really beginning to think outside of the 

box about how we can include people with disabilities in the world of policing, in ways that we haven't 

done before.
Donelan 

20:42

Ariel, can you continue on with Leigh Ann's thoughts in terms of what messages that you present to law 

enforcement that hey, you need to remember this when working with people with intellectual and 

developmental disabilities.

Simms 

20:55

So in addition to reminding officers about, you know, stereotypes that exist in helping them understand 

and break down those stereotypes, another really important message for officers is that they do actually 

have legal obligations toward the disability community. People with disabilities are a protected class. 

They're protected from discrimination and discrimination can take many, many forms, so when officer's 

interacting with a person with a disability, they have to keep in the back of their mind that, you know, 

this person is a protected, a member of a protected class and they do have to modify their behavior to 

ensure that that person is being treated fairly and treated like people without disabilities, too. And that, 

that's so key.

So, one of our goals whenever we train or we're communicating with officers is to make sure that they 

feel empowered to work with the disability community in very positive ways so that there never really is 

an issue of, sort of, legal compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act or other civil rights laws 

and we do that for, through a variety of, sort of, practical tools and tips and resources. And, one 

particular model I'll mention that we use is called the ADA model. And it's stands for Assess, Dialogue, 

Assist, but is also meant to remind officers that, if they believe they're interacting with someone with a 

disability, they need to kind of slow down the situation, assess for safety, challenge their assumptions 

about the person they may be interacting with, have a dialogue with that person about what that 

person may actually need from the officer and then in the assist phase, respond appropriately.

Donelan

22:33

It seems like time is so critical and, you know, slowing it down, when possible. In these last few minutes 

that we have together, I want to start with you, Leigh Ann, by phone, regarding your training goals, who 

are you working with to create training and how is your training different than others?

Davis

22:50

So, we're working with both national level and local partners in this training effort. And we understand 

that we can't possibly have all the answers in the disability community. So, our goal is to partner with 

law enforcement and other criminal justice professionals who are working throughout the system to 

come up with solutions that are site specific and that really work. And I did want to mention too, first 
and foremost, that our goal is both officer and citizen safety. And that one is not more important than 

the other. They're both equally important. 

So, step one is creating safer encounters. That really creates a stronger respect of people with 

disabilities, and better understanding about this population. And also better relationships between 

officers and people with disabilities, as well as within the larger disability community.

Donelan

23:45

Perfect, thank you. It's not one size fits all. Ariel . . . Pathways, talk to me just a little bit about that as we 

wrap up here.

Simms 

23:54

Sure, so, Pathways to Justice is, sort of, our signature training but as Leigh Ann said, it's really more than 

training, it's about creating a disability response team, getting everybody together at the table who has 

a stake in this issue, and getting them to move forward with concrete action steps and a couple of things 

I would highlight about our training, or sort of our approach whenever we're working with criminal 

justice professionals compared to other trainings that already exist. We're always coming from that 

bright space perspective. Reminding officers that they have legal obligations, but again, giving them 

really practical strategies for compliance, not sort of coming in and banging them over the head with 

this civil rights law, but to say, you know, here are really concrete ways that you can make sure that 

you're treating people with disabilities with respect and in compliance with civil rights law.

Our trainings focus on the broader developmental disabilities community. When you meet one person 

with a disability you've met one person with a disability. So you really need to think about the broader 

disability community and focus training efforts more broadly.

We include self advocates as trainers. This is huge difference from other trainings that we see. Again, it's 

about including people with disabilities in things that are about people with disabilities. And we really 

try to focus in on individuals and not just on diagnoses. Because for officers, a diagnosis probably 

doesn't mean much, what's important is the individual in front of them and how that person is 

interacting and what that person might need in that particular moment.

Donelan

25:28

As we wrap up here, ladies, I just want to tell you how greatly we appreciate you bringing this topic to 

the forefront, talking about it, getting conversations going. Let me just ask you really quick, Ariel, can 

people contact the Center for more on this topic? And if so, how would you prefer to be contacted?
Simms 

25:44

They can check out our website first for information and resources. You can find a link there to follow us 

on Facebook, where we highlight stories from the system every day, real life stories. That website is WW-W-dot-T-H-E-A-R-C-dot-O-R-G-forward slash-N-C- C-J-D. That's www.thearc.org/NCCJD. 

If officers are interested in trainings or need other technical assistance, there's a form on our website 

called the Request Assistance form that they can fill out and reach out to us. Or you can email us at 

NCCJDinfo@thearc.org. That's N-C-C-J-D-I-N-F-O-at symbol-T-H-E-A-R-C-dot-O- R-G. 

Donelan

26:32

Perfect. And, Leigh Ann, thank you for joining us. Any resources you want to make sure that people have 

and that we share with the audience as well?

Davis

26:40

Yes, as we mentioned, the Pathways to Justice training is on our website. But we also have other 

publications on a number of different topics related to people with intellectual disabilities in the criminal 

justice system. And we also have one-page tip sheets for officers too. The tip sheets for law 

enforcement are one-page, double-sided handouts that provide an overview of our law enforcement 

training module and can be used in roll calls or other brief training opportunities. And so, we've got 

some really great resources for officers and we hope that the listeners will check these out.

Donelan

27:17

Perfect. Thank you ladies both for joining us. That's Leigh Ann Davis of The Arc's National Center on 

Criminal Justice and Disability and Ariel Simms of The Arc's National Center on Criminal Justice and 

Disability. Thank you so much for listening to The Beat. 

Disclaimer: The Beat Exit

27:31

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Voiceover: Disclaimer

28:30

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, 

products or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of 

Justice, rather the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.