Brian Shrader
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
They're given an impossible task. And so absent someone at the public defender's office being willing to allocate resources that they may not even have, it's not going to get flagged there. We have to have a system, number one, to identify the issues.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
because right now i think there's a lot of under reporting or under consideration of how significant the problem is uh because we don't know we don't know what's out there especially in some of the homeless population people who aren't getting medical treatment regularly they're not being diagnosed by anyone ever in a lifetime and so that's not getting reported you know we talk about one percent or these low percentages i think much higher percent in reality
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
I think we have a lot of people who have successful careers or seen as having successful careers or living normal lives who suffer from some form of divergence or mental health issues.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
As part of criminal defense work, it's inevitable that we're going to encounter a lot of different mental health issues. Substantial amount are related to drug addiction, either mental health issues caused by drug addiction or mental health issues that lead to drug addiction.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And that can span all the different types of diagnoses and levels of it, whether it's anxiety and depression, which can be rippling for some people, all the way through schizophrenia and total psychosis and things like that. And so until we can really identify this,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And we have resources in place to be able to really track it and say, this is a much more significant portion of our population that's being underserved and it's being mistreated. And then the step two would be then provide the resources for it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Maybe step one, we're so far from achieving, so unattainable under our current set of values and resources as a society that we can't even talk about step two yet.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
It is a system that's going to have to fix itself while running at full steam.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
there's not going to be an ability to stop the need we're going to have to just interject ourselves into things as they're happening and try and fix it on the fly at a state level you know might have more of a chance of getting someone to listen than at a federal level at least initially it'd be great to have federal resources allocated although i won't get into the current political and crises we may be facing with getting any of that a type of assistance or strange things that are going on but
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We have to do something. And I know there's a lot of other criminal defense attorneys who would agree with all this. I wouldn't hesitate to call up my colleagues and say, don't you agree? And they would all say, yeah, we agree, but we don't know what to do. We don't have an answer to how to fix it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And a lot of that is because we're looking, we're not looking a year down the road or five years down the road. We're looking six weeks down the road when I have the hearing. And then that hearing comes and goes. And unfortunately, that file gets closed out. We move on to the next thing and we start all over. And we may have some retained institutionalized knowledge that I'm
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
But we also see people, and I can't sit here and say that it's always been referred to by its name, is autism or any other type of neurodivergent or what some people refer to as neurodivergent situations.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
I'm happy to share anything I have with anybody else. And I find most of my colleagues are the same way. But it may need to come from public defenders, the elected public defenders or appointed public defenders, depending on the jurisdiction, to be able to talk about things loud enough and with enough kind of background and statistics that they keep themselves.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
So that might be a great place to start.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Yeah, change is hard. Change is real hard and people will resist change every step, especially in the system where there's a lot of motivation for, like I said, for people just to get things off their desk and move on. to add an extra step in there or ask someone to spend some time putting into place a new system is tough. Funding it is always going to be a problem.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And these are programs that have to be government funded. There's not going to be a private donor step up and who are going through the systems sometimes by the very nature of what they're going through, are not going to have the personal financial resources to be able to fund their own way. That's just a reality for a lot of people.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And I know I mentioned before, and I'll bring it up, our homeless population is full of mental health problems. probably could be treated. And a lot of the individuals who are just languishing and really struggling on so many fronts, not just from a poverty front, but from the mental health front and physical, untreated physical ailments, a lot of these people are right in our face every day.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
It's not always called by its name, but what we see and where I think I've seen autism, it's specifically in the criminal justice system the most, is mostly with dealing with escalating and de-escalating situations. I have not seen a lot of situations where I can say my autism caused me to commit a theft. That's not necessarily something we're going to see.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We're going to have to provide the resources for them, but we can't get them to get a job or
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
take some responsibility for yourselves we can't do that until we can get their mindset right until we help get them set up to succeed otherwise we're just picking them up dusting them off maybe we give them some new clothes some toiletries a place to stay for a few nights and they're going to be right back out into the struggle again they don't have those tools mentally to to put together everything they need and a lot of them are very ill
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Tragedy sometimes will spur the media to do something. It's a terrible thing to think is what it's going to take. But we saw some reform after things like the death of George Floyd, and we can see some changes in policing there.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We're also dealing with a certain level of disparity because when the wealthy, the powerful class, has someone in their family with a mental health problem, it gets treated. It gets dealt with. This shouldn't be a problem in their eyes. You just go do the thing. And as long as you do the things, everything's going to be okay. And why isn't everyone just doing the things?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
obviously now we can go down the rabbit hole of our health care system in this country spend a few hours on that but it just makes sense to me when we're looking at a portion of our population that the cynical and i think ill-informed portions of society look at and say it's a burden where those people are dangerous or those are are people that are prone for criminal activity
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And we know, because common sense tells us, in addition to our own experiences, that a lot of that portion of the population has untreated mental health. Why not provide a little bit of those resources so we don't have to provide the other resources?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
There are people in the system who do care. and who do want to learn and who do want to take whatever we learn and share it with our colleagues so that we can make change. But we're not equipped for it naturally as part of our professional progression and the path that most of us take to get to these positions. So we will miss some.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
But what we will see is someone who commits a theft is then confronted by law enforcement, taken into a small room. There's four or five people trying to interrogate them. And the situation will escalate into something else or law enforcement will go to arrest someone. grab ahold of them, try and manipulate their body.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We will swing at some pitches and totally miss and maybe even strike out on some issues. But there are those of us who really do care and who really do want to see change and who want to see these issues addressed properly. We just need help from people in the medical fields informing us and coming forward and providing us with scholarly articles and information that we can use.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And we need help from our colleagues on the law enforcement side and the judiciary to listen and have an open mind for this. But we are here. We do want to help. There are a lot of us. We talk about it. It really is a significant issue that for however long our criminal justice system is going to go on and has gone on, it's going to need to be addressed. Shocking it hasn't yet.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Yeah, thank you, Tony. It was great to get the invitation.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And we see them resist, tense up, start to have a very strong emotional, physical reaction to it. And we see those things certainly escalate the situation instead of someone who perhaps was not on the autism spectrum, who was caught doing something as basic as a petty theft from Walmart. They may be able to talk their way out of it a little better.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
They may be able to deescalate the situation a little more comprehend if law enforcement give them the option of a pre-arrest diversion situation. And so that's where we've seen autism actually called by its name in the situation.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
If we want to talk about the mental health situation, the criminal justice system generally, I don't think we have enough time in the day or the week or the month to really dive into it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Generally, I think I'd be negligent in talking to anyone in a public forum without mentioning our criminal justice system is not equipped to deal with mental health situations. It is not equipped because lawyers are not trained on this from the start. We are not trained on it throughout our careers.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And we are certainly not seeing training on these specific things mandated for the people who maybe need to know the most, which are prosecutors and judges. And to a certain extent in the federal system, the probation officers who are preparing pre-sentence investigation reports, there's almost not even a recognition of
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
of these things we've seen a lot of progress or attempts at progress in dealing with substance abuse problems in and of themselves and we'll see some carry over into dual diagnosis situations but when i do encounter something that is purely a mental health problem
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
or a mental health situation first where perhaps drugs were exacerbating the issue or drugs were just secondary result of the underlying mental health issue or the situation that the mental health issue would put someone in, there is almost no resources and no procedure to really handle that mental health situation aside from challenges to competency,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
which are not always going to be helpful, especially in an autism spectrum situation, or just challenges to overall capacity to even commit a crime, kind of not guilty by reason of insanity, a layman's term, that also a lot of people don't fit into. And so we're often left with no options or no good options, especially in situations where there's no insurance.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
That's a really long, rambling answer to a very basic question.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Education has to be the key, and this is perhaps for our entire society. We still deal with a lot of stigma on mental health issues. We still have a lot of misunderstanding. There's still a lot of, in the criminal justice system, especially on the prosecutor side, of belief that people are faking it or they're using it as an excuse. When we have really good doctors... And we are very fortunate.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
I work with some tremendous mental health doctors who can explain it and talk to the judges about it. It still is coming from the standpoint of a criminal defense attorney doing their job. So sometimes I think it gets written off. We have these tremendous presentations. We can discuss these scientific level of questions.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
diagnosis and understanding what the different kind of thresholds for behaviors and reactions and thresholds for understanding and comprehending presented and laid out before the court. And yet there's not enough willingness to listen and there's not enough willingness to put the effort into understanding amongst a lot of my colleagues. I have to be careful not to talk about examples.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Trial attorneys love to tell war stories, and I really want to dive into this one case specifically that I'm actually working on right now that has been extremely frustrating. But suffice to say that when we see mental health situations come in that are purely mental health situations,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
we're really screaming into the abyss trying to get someone to pay attention and we're very lucky when we get people you know for someone like me i'm very lucky there are people who work at the state attorney's office still that i know on a personal level that i can come to and say I'm not just being defense attorney here. This is real. This is something that is unique and needs to be looked at.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Even then, sometimes it's difficult because we don't have a path. Our mental health diversion program in Hillsborough County, Florida has a six-month wait list. And the answer to the question for people who've committed crimes and then sometimes when they're having a true mental health break, there'll be crime after crime. They may get arrested for something, manage to get out.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
They're going to pick up something else right away. Now their bond gets revoked. And the answer is they just sit in jail for six months waiting to see if they get into the diversion program. And the jail gives no treatment. Am I coming close?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And that's the key. You've got to play on the idea. And I don't want to be too cynical and I don't want to get in trouble with any of my judge friends. They want to do the least amount of work necessary to get through their dockets. And so do the prosecutors. They're not paid by the case. They're not paid by the hour.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And so if you can convince them that this is a way to get the files off their desk for good. That's going to be one of the first thing that's going to trigger. And it's a very cynical view. I think a lot of the people that I work across from or up on the bench are good hearted people who, if they got a chance to really help, someone would want to do it because they're good people.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
But from a more cynical standpoint, if we can just show
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
the system in general that this is a way to get people out of it to stop being a burden i use the air quotes on that because it's it's not how i feel about it but that's how a lot of people would see it if we can get them to see that then maybe it's worth investing in and we've seen it in the drug treatment we've seen some progress it is not where it needs to be
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We still over-incarcerate for drug abuse issues. We still just approach the whole system wrong. But if someone gets arrested on multiple drug charges, I can get them into a rehabilitation facility quick. I can facilitate that and the courts are ready for it. There are forms with everything almost filled out for you to get a lot of that done.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Comes to mental health, we're starting from scratch in every single case.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
You're going to have to start with the Florida Bar. The Florida Supreme Court started mandating mental health training for prosecutors. When I was a prosecutor, we took all the really cool classes that we thought were exciting about murders and gang prosecution and blood and gut stuff. We weren't interested in the mental health stuff.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Like I said, I spent a short time in the mental health diversion program because it was just part of the promotion chain. You had to serve your time in there before you could go to the next step. It wasn't a destination. It wasn't anything anyone was deciding to focus on.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
But it extends not just between kind of the people who we see maybe at the top of the pyramid, the judges, the prosecutors, law enforcement, but even the people who work under them. For example, a mental health client goes to the jail. They put them on opioid withdrawal therapy.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
The guy had never done a single opioid, but he was presenting with a lot of the same symptoms as someone who was on fentanyl or some strong opioid. And they're telling him he's going to take all this medication and go through opioid withdrawal. It was a bipolar situation. Aren't there nurses and doctors there doing these evaluations? And shouldn't they be trained to recognize this right away?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Yeah. Any opportunity to help out?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
And when they see it, shouldn't they have an obligation to say, hey, look, red flag. This is a situation that needs to be treated differently. and especially shouldn't be treated, again, in ways that escalate, locking them in some small cell alone, tripping them down naked into a paper jumpsuit.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
All of these hands-on with people can be very overstimulating, very scary, and it can really trigger things to get much worse. We've got to train everybody on that, and there has to be accountability. And unfortunately, accountability in the criminal justice system for law enforcement tends to only come after someone dies.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
Sure. I've been doing criminal law since 2008. Started out as a prosecutor, including a short stint in the mental health diversion program that everyone had to go through as kind of part of the promotion chain, and then left the state attorney's office to do criminal defense work and a few other areas of law.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
That's the answer, is we've got to show them The system will be saved because clearly saving an individual is not enough to motivate anybody. Otherwise, this would have been done by now. But we still have first responders who are not properly trained, and we don't have people to accompany them to situations who are, if that was a possibility.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
We don't have prosecutors who are trained to recognize it. I need to take a step back there. We don't have prosecutors with the resources to even try and evaluate it if they wanted to. I think at one point I had a thousand files when I was a prosecutor assigned to me and we were turning these things like every 90 days. I wasn't reading the police reports.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
I wasn't digging into each file in any detail.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Shrader: How Autism is Misunderstood in the Legal System
i was looking at the general allegations looking at their criminal history making a plea offer and trusting that the defense attorneys were going to do it but a lot of these individuals are going to end up with public defenders who also are taxed to the maximum who have very little resources and have too many files assigned to them and a lot of public defenders are tremendous attorneys and tremendous people who really are trying to do the best they can but