Data Source: Suslovic, B., Shankar, S., & Gottlieb, A. (2025). Race/Ethnicity, Neurodivergence, and Odds of Staff Physical Assault in Youth Carceral Settings. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. https://doi.org/10.1086/734616. (Graph: Emily Widra, 2025)

This graph originally appeared in New study finds confined neurodivergent youth of color are particularly vulnerable to physical assault by staff.

Among white, Black, and Hispanic confined youth, those identified as neurodivergent — meaning they’ve ever been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, a learning disability, Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome — are more likely to have been physically assaulted by staff, based on self-reporting in the 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody