<p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2117852/open_sms">Send us a text</a></p><p>Christine Vester shares her mission with Humanity Over Handcuffs, a national advocacy movement protecting autistic individuals from being criminalized by the justice system. </p><p>Her organization supports families, educates legal professionals, and works toward reforming a system that often treats neurological differences as criminal behavior.<br><br>• Autistic behaviors like lack of eye contact, shutdowns, and sensory overload often misinterpreted by police as aggression or defiance<br>• Families seeking help unexpectedly find themselves battling a legal system unprepared to understand autism<br>• Courts routinely fail to consider autism as a mitigating factor, treating autistic individuals like typical defendants<br>• Prison environments create traumatic sensory overload for autistic individuals, who may face targeting by other inmates<br>• Incarceration carries long-lasting consequences, creating barriers to housing, employment, and community reintegration <br>• Humanity Over Handcuffs is developing resources connecting families with attorneys, mental health professionals, and support systems<br>• Change requires judges, attorneys, legislators, and CIT trainers working together to create more compassionate approaches<br><br>You're not alone and not powerless. </p><p>Our children are not broken, autism is not a crime, and together we can show what justice should really look like—humanity first.<br><br><br></p><p>https://tonymantor.com<br>https://Facebook.com/tonymantor<br>https://instagram.com/tonymantor<br>https://twitter.com/tonymantor<br>https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic<br>intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild<br>Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)</p>