Half of people arrested in London may have undiagnosed ADHD, study finds

Screening for neurodivergence could enable better support for vulnerable individuals, say experts

University of Cambridge

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Offering screening for neurodivergence to people detained by the police could help ensure access to appropriate support and fairer treatment in the criminal justice system, say Cambridge researchers, after a study suggests that one in two individuals arrested and detained in London may have undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and one in 20 may have undiagnosed autism.

Research has consistently found that neurodivergent individuals – particularly autistic people and those with ADHD – are overrepresented within prison populations. There is also growing evidence of undiagnosed ADHD and autism among individuals in contact with the criminal justice system. However, estimates of the prevalence of the conditions within these settings differ.

Dr Tanya Procyshyn, a research associate at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, said: “To ensure fair treatment in the criminal justice system, we need to understand how neurodivergence affects interactions with the law. This can help avoid unnecessary criminalisation of misunderstood behaviour and ensure that potentially vulnerable individuals are able to access appropriate support.”

Dr Procyshyn and Dion Brown, a senior Detective from the Metropolitan Police Service, co-led a study to explore the feasibility of screening arrested individuals for traits related to ADHD and autism and to examine the reason leading to the arrest.

Over an eight-week period in 2024, people detained at six London Metropolitan Police custody centres were offered voluntary screening for ADHD and autism carried out on-site by a healthcare professional, detention officer, or arresting police officer.

ADHD traits were assessed using a modified version of the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale. Autistic traits were assessed using the 10-item Autism-Spectrum Quotient. Although these tools are not diagnostic, they provide a practical method to flag individuals who may benefit from further assessment.

The results are published today in Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.

The majority of the 303 eligible individuals arrested (71%) consented to screening. Individuals who screened above the thresholds for ADHD or autistic traits were informed and given additional information on how to seek a formal diagnosis.

Eight per cent of arrested individuals had an existing diagnosis of ADHD, which is slightly higher than the prevalence of ADHD in the general population (5%). However, an additional one in two people (50%) without an existing ADHD diagnosis scored at or above the threshold for possible undiagnosed ADHD. Strikingly, this included 33 individuals (17%) whose scores suggested a very high number of ADHD traits.

Nine individuals (4.2%) had an existing autism diagnosis, which again is slightly higher than the prevalence of autism in the general adult population (3%). An additional 5.4% scored at or above the threshold for possible undiagnosed autism.

Regarding the reason leading to the arrest, six in 10 individuals (60%) arrested for drug offences had an existing diagnosis or positive screening result for ADHD. Previous studies have found that some neurodivergent individuals may self-medicate with illegal substances. Several studies have also reported that people with ADHD are less likely to engage in criminal behaviour when taking medication for ADHD, and this effect is thought to reflect improved impulse control.

Dion Brown, a senior Detective from the Metropolitan Police Service, said: "Screening for ADHD and autism at the first point of contact with law enforcement benefits both the criminal justice system and the individuals involved.

“Early identification helps officers interpret behaviours that might otherwise be misunderstood and ensures appropriate support is provided. This approach creates opportunities to divert vulnerable individuals away from the criminal justice process and towards the help they may need.”

Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, and a member of the team, added: “Screening for possible neurodivergence will allow more informed legal decision-making, taking into account cognitive and communicative differences. It can also help ensure defendants get access to legal protection and appropriate counsel. This could improve both the treatment and experiences of neurodivergent people in the criminal justice system and ultimately lead to fairer outcomes, including protection under the law, which is a basic human right.”

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Reference

Brown, D & Procyshyn, TL et al. Neurodiversity in custody: Screening results for ADHD and autistic traits in individuals arrested by the London Metropolitan Police. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health; 10 Dec 2025

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Journal

Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health

DOI

10.1002/cbm.70018 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Neurodiversity in custody: Screening results for ADHD and autistic traits in individuals arrested by the London Metropolitan Police

Article Publication Date

10-Dec-2025

 

For knowledge scouts, broader isn’t better

Innovation scouts who work across multiple divisions struggle to launch products successfully

University of Texas at Austin

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In the world of sports, scouts look for promising new talent to create championship teams. In the technology world, many large companies use knowledge scouts in a similar way. A 2024 Gartner survey found 48% of R&D organizations have a formal technology scouting process.

Scouts bridge gaps between external startups and in-house teams to spark innovation. They source new ideas and knowledge from the outside world, helping companies create new and better products and make processes more efficient.

But new research from Francisco Polidoro Jr., professor of management at Texas McCombs, finds a hidden tension among knowledge scouts. A key part of their role — working with multiple divisions to foster collaboration — can actually make them less effective, not more.

Those who frequently work across divisions, he found, are less likely to see projects through to completion.

“Scouts are intermediaries, brokers,” Polidoro says. “They straddle both worlds. We find that what they learn — both cognitively and in the relationships they build — does not necessarily transfer across divisions.”

Divided, They Fail

In multidivisional firms, scouts often put down roots in one or more divisions. They support projects in specific divisions while also bringing new ideas to other teams across the entire organization.

Until now, though, it’s been unclear whether experience in one division translates to success in others, Polidoro says.

With Benoit Decreton of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Felipe Monteiro of INSEAD, he analyzed data on scouts’ activities at a large European telecommunications company. The researchers looked at 245 projects from 2005 to 2018 across its five divisions, which used knowledge from startups to help launch new products.

They found that scouts undertook 27% of their projects in divisions other than the ones in which they had previously completed most projects.

But those newer projects had disappointing results. Scouts who had supported other divisions were as much as 20% less likely to complete their current project successfully.

Why didn’t knowledge and relationships carry over from one division to another? Polidoro suggests some possible reasons.

Workplace cultural differences. A scout might overlook the fact that another division follows a different budgeting cycle or speaks in a different jargon. One division’s go-to decision maker might be a role to steer clear of in another division.

“Trust, support, and an understanding of unspoken political dynamics rarely transfer seamlessly across divisions,” Polidoro says.

Team rivalry. Scouts became less effective when they worked across divisions that shared both similar products and customers and thus competed with each other. The more the overlap, the greater the negative effect.

Familiarity Breeds Success

The researchers found one factor, however, that boosted scouts’ chances of success: familiarity.

When a scout’s insights echoed ideas a division had already worked with, the project was more likely to succeed. Teams could align quickly and focus on the right features in early prototypes.

For companies, the study highlights the challenges of managing knowledge scouts, Polidoro says. He recommends:

• Balance their roles between deep specialization and broader exposure.
• Rotate them across divisions that don’t directly compete, while focusing them on areas where both divisions have worked already.
• Assign them one or two projects a year that adapt an external idea for multiple divisions at once.
• Train them in cultural skills such as championing innovations and navigating internal politics.

“You just have to be more strategic,” Polidoro says. “Companies need to be more mindful of how they rotate scouts across projects and time.”

“Deeply Rooted and Versatile? Knowledge Scouts and External Knowledge Integration in Multidivisional Firms” is published online in the Academy of Management Journal.

 

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Journal

Academy of Management Journal

DOI

10.5465/amj.2024.0276 

Article Title

Deeply Rooted and Versatile? Knowledge Scouts and External Knowledge Integration in Multidivisional Firms

The rhythm of swarms

Researchers from Konstanz and Jülich realize tunable “swarmalators” – particles that both move in space and synchronize in time like living organisms

University of Konstanz

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A collaboration between the University of Konstanz and Forschungszentrum Jülich has achieved the first fully tunable experimental realization of a long predicted “swarmalator” system. The study, published in Nature Communications, shows how tiny, self-propelled particles can simultaneously coordinate their motion and synchronize their internal rhythms – a behaviour reminiscent of flashing fireflies, japanese tree frogs or schooling fish. The results underline how collective dynamics can arise from simple interactions, without overarching leadership or control. Possible applications include autonomous robotic swarms.

Swarmalators – short for swarming oscillators – are systems in which each individual not only moves but also oscillates, with motion and rhythm influencing one another. In nature, this form of coupling is widespread: fireflies, for example, synchronize their flashes with nearby peers to attract mates more effectively, resulting in spectacular collective light displays. Japanese tree frogs coordinate their mating calls in astounding synchronized patterns, while large fish schools are known for the coordinated movement of thousands of individuals, each influencing the other’s pace. Until now, however, such behaviour had never been realized in a controllable physical system.

In the new study, Veit-Lorenz Heuthe and Clemens Bechinger (University of Konstanz) together with Priyanka Iyer and Gerhard Gompper (Forschungszentrum Jülich) created a microscopic swarmalator model from light-driven colloidal particles (colloids = microscopic particles dispersed in a liquid).

Each particle aims to move towards a reference point guided by a laser-based feedback loop, but with a small time-delay which induces an orbiting, oscillatory motion around the reference point. When many of these oscillators interact through hydrodynamic flows in the liquid, they spontaneously synchronize and self-organize into complex patterns. “By tuning a single parameter, we can switch the system from synchronized clusters to rotating or completely dispersed states,” says Veit-Lorenz Heuthe, who performed the experiments.

A particularly striking new observation is the emergence of a rotating swarmalator state. Here, synchronized particles generate tiny circulating flow fields that combine into a collective torque, causing the entire cluster to rotate — even though none of the particles exerts a torque itself. Instead, this rotation originates from phase-dependent lateral hydrodynamic forces between neighbouring particles and gives rise to collective motion closely resembling the vortical clusters observed in some biological systems, such as groups of starfish embryos or bacterial colonies.

Numerical simulations by the Jülich team reproduced these effects and revealed how hydrodynamic coupling leads to synchronization-dependent attractive, repulsive and lateral forces. “Our simulations uncover how fluidic flow fields create feedback between motion and phase — the essence of swarmalator behaviour,” explains Priyanka Iyer, who led the numerical modeling.

“It’s fascinating that such simple systems can mimic the complex collective dynamics of living organisms," adds Clemens Bechinger.

As the particles’ coupling strength and synchronization can be precisely controlled, the system also provides a model for autonomous robotic swarms, where coordination and task-sharing could emerge spontaneously without centralized control. The study establishes a versatile platform for exploring how complex collective behaviour and memory emerge from simple interaction rules — bridging the worlds of biological collectives and synthetic active matter.

 

Publication: Veit-Lorenz Heuthe, Priyanka Iyer, Gerhard Gompper, and Clemens Bechinger, Tunable colloidal swarmalators with hydrodynamic coupling
Nat Commun 16, 10984 (2025)
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-66830-5
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-66830-5

 

Note to editors:
You can download an image here:
LINK

Caption: Rotating swarmalator which emerges from phase-dependent lateral hydrodynamic forces between orbiting active colloids, which generate a collective torque and lead to self-organized cluster rotation without any built-in chirality.
Copyright © Tanwi Debnath, Forschungszentrum Jülich

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-66830-5 

 

Rethinking climate migration

Yale University

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image: 

Heavy flooding from the Rio Grande submerges vehicles in Camotan, Guatemala after Hurricane Lota hits on November 18, 2020. 

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Credit: Morena Perez Joachin/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

As rising temperatures, intensifying storms, increased flooding, and land degradation impact communities, residents in vulnerable areas are navigating difficult questions: Do they stay and adapt, or should they leave? Yet, the issue may not just come down to those two rigid binaries.

In a commentary in Nature Climate Change co-authored by Brianna Castro, assistant professor of urban sustainability, an international team of scientists argue that many people affected by climate change don’t fit neatly into the “move” or “stay” dichotomy. Instead, individuals and families are drawing on intergenerational ties, social networks, cultural roots and identity to navigate risks and plan for the future. They may relocate temporarily or seasonally, instead of a permanent move. The researchers identified this alternative as “tethered resilience,” in which climate impacts are secondary in the decision to migrate compared to economic, social, cultural, and demographic factors.

“This concept really flips the script and narrative on climate migration,” Castro said. “People are complex. They have social forces, economic forces, ideas and goals for their future, and the decision to say or go is woven into all these factors. They are actively choosing to stay in a climate-impacted area, not because they are trapped, but because they are deeply tethered.”

The paper cited several examples:

• In Fiji, families voluntarily stay in climate-vulnerable coastal areas, but also actively plan for generational retreat in which their children will move inland and build homes on higher ground.
• In Guatemala, where climate change is intensifying risks of drought and crop failure, younger residents view local economic initiatives as a strategy to improve the future so they can continue to reside there.
• In rural Bangladesh, women, who are tied to their location because of traditional gender roles, are engaging in resilience-building activities such as community farming, and home-based enterprises.

The paper refutes the myth that people are moving in larger waves and that staying in place is a failure to adapt. Instead, the scientists point to four specific issues that shape decisions about the future. They are: the presence (or absence) of opportunities for individuals and families to blend ancestral practices with innovation that can help advance climate adaptation efforts; cultural values that focus on sustaining heritage; whether governments and institutions are providing support for adaptation through infrastructure, land rights, and access to credit; and structural inequalities that present unique challenges to marginalized groups.

People are complex. They have social forces, economic forces, ideas and goals for their future, and the decision to say or go is woven into all these factors.”

Brianna Castro Assistant Professor of Urban Sustainability

“What the world needs to know is that many people don’t just ‘move away or give up.’ Instead, they try to adapt in mixed ways,” said Bishawjit Mallick, associate professor at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Utrect and the lead author on the paper. “Mobility plus rootedness becomes a third path, a strategy for future-making under risk. By framing resilience in this tethered way, the concept broadens what climate adaptation could mean… and helps policymakers and researchers think about flexible, context-specific solutions.”

Tethered resilience reorients adaptation into a dynamic, proactive process that transcends limitations, the researchers note.

“I hope that this information encourages institutions to invest in social infrastructure and networks that underscore the right to stay and adapt in place,” Castro said. “People’s attachment to land, identity, and community matters.”

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Journal

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-025-02506-8 

Article Title

Future-making beyond (im)mobility through tethered resilience