Compliance Culture and the Criminalization of Neurodivergence
Bridgette Hamstead
Compliance culture is one of the most insidious mechanisms through which neurodivergent people are marginalized, punished, and made invisible. It permeates schools, workplaces, medical settings, and public life, shaping expectations around behavior, communication, attention, movement, and emotional regulation. At its core, compliance culture rewards conformity to dominant norms rooted in white, neurotypical, able-bodied, cisgender, and capitalist ideals of productivity, control, and deference to authority. Those who can conform are seen as cooperative, professional, well-adjusted, and socially competent. Those who cannot are labeled disruptive, oppositional, difficult, unstable, or threatening. For neurodivergent people, this framework is not neutral. It is violent. It conditions our survival on our ability to suppress or mask behaviors that are authentic responses to our environment. It criminalizes our expressions of distress. And it disciplines our bodies and minds in the name of safety, efficiency, and order.
In schools, the demand for compliance begins early. Neurodivergent children are taught that success depends on sitting still, following directions without question, making eye contact, staying quiet, and completing tasks within narrow time constraints. These expectations are enforced through behavioral charts, loss of recess, disciplinary referrals, and the constant threat of suspension or expulsion. Autistic and ADHD students who stim, speak out of turn, fidget, or melt down under sensory stress are often pathologized or punished rather than supported. Black and brown neurodivergent students are especially vulnerable to criminalization, as their behaviors are more likely to be interpreted as aggressive, defiant, or dangerous. According to federal civil rights data, students with disabilities, particularly those of color, are significantly more likely to be suspended, restrained, secluded, or referred to law enforcement. These are not isolated disciplinary actions. They are structural tools of control, wielded against students whose behaviors reflect neurological difference, trauma responses, or legitimate distress.
This same logic extends into workplaces, where compliance is recoded as professionalism. Employees are expected to adhere to unspoken behavioral scripts: speak in a particular tone, maintain eye contact, respond to emails quickly, work within rigid deadlines, suppress emotional responses, and perform constant emotional labor in service of customer satisfaction or team cohesion. Neurodivergent workers who communicate directly, stim openly, express overwhelm, request flexibility, or challenge normative power dynamics are often penalized, not necessarily through formal discipline, but through exclusion from leadership, poor performance reviews, social marginalization, or being labeled “not a team player.” Workplace neurodiversity initiatives often focus on awareness and surface-level accommodations without addressing the deeper cultural norms that equate conformity with competence. When difference is only tolerated to the extent that it doesn’t disrupt the status quo, inclusion becomes another word for assimilation.
In public life, neurodivergent people are regularly surveilled and criminalized for behaviors that do not fit into neurotypical expectations of order and decorum. Autistic people who flap their hands, rock, or speak in scripts may be treated as suspicious or unstable. People in the midst of a shutdown or sensory overload may be misread as intoxicated, uncooperative, or mentally ill. Non-speaking or selectively speaking individuals are often treated as noncompliant, even when they are communicating in other valid ways. Interactions with law enforcement can quickly escalate, especially when officers are trained to read eye contact, tone, and body language through a neurotypical lens. Numerous cases have emerged in recent years of neurodivergent people, many of them multiply marginalized, being arrested, institutionalized, or killed in encounters that began with misinterpretations of behavior. The supposed imperative for safety becomes a pretext for control, and neurodivergent expressions become grounds for removal, restraint, or punishment.
Medical and mental health systems also participate in this dynamic by interpreting patient behavior through a compliance framework. Patients who do not follow recommendations, question diagnostic criteria, or express distress in ways that challenge the provider’s authority are often labeled noncompliant, resistant, or difficult. This is particularly true for neurodivergent women and gender-diverse people, who are frequently misdiagnosed or dismissed when their presentations do not align with stereotypical norms. Compliance becomes the measure of credibility. Those who nod, take notes, and appear regulated are believed. Those who express frustration, stim visibly, or present with complex or co-occurring experiences are more likely to be gaslit, over-medicated, or denied care altogether. In these spaces, neurodivergent people are expected to translate ourselves, filter our emotions, and maintain composure in the face of systemic invalidation, all in order to be treated with basic respect.
The language of compliance is not just about behavior, it is about power. It is used to determine whose needs are valid, whose emotions are acceptable, and whose presence is tolerable. It creates an invisible hierarchy of worthiness, where the most masked and manageable are rewarded, while those whose differences are more visible or embodied are deemed too disruptive to include. Neurodivergent people who cannot or will not comply, because doing so would mean abandoning their integrity, safety, or humanity, are pushed out. And then, having been excluded, they are blamed for not trying hard enough to fit in.
To dismantle compliance culture, we must first recognize it as a cultural system, not an individual preference. It is not about civility or cooperation; it is about control. It is about demanding legibility according to dominant norms and punishing those who fail to conform. True neurodiversity justice requires us to reject the premise that sameness is the goal. It requires that we stop celebrating how well people disappear themselves in order to be included. And it requires that we interrogate our own complicity in upholding systems that demand emotional neutrality, behavioral conformity, and linguistic precision in the name of access or inclusion.
Instead of compliance, we can cultivate consent. Instead of control, we can build trust. Instead of surveillance, we can create safety. This means listening to neurodivergent people, not just when we are quiet and composed, but when we are messy, angry, overwhelmed, and real. It means redesigning classrooms, workplaces, and public policies to account for a full range of communication, expression, regulation, and engagement. And it means shifting the question from “Why won’t this person comply?” to “What is this space demanding of them, and why?” Until we make that shift, we are not practicing inclusion. We are simply perfecting exclusion and calling it order.
Reflection Questions:
How were you taught, explicitly or implicitly, to define "good behavior" in school or at work? Whose behavior was considered "disruptive," and how was it handled?
When you hear the word "compliance," what does it bring up for you emotionally, personally, or politically? How has that word shown up in your life?
Have you ever felt rewarded for masking, suppressing, or modifying your natural communication or movement to appear more “professional” or “appropriate”? What did it cost you?
In your current environment, who gets labeled “noncompliant,” “difficult,” or “challenging”? Are those labels tied to power, communication style, race, disability, or cultural norms?
How does your workplace or institution measure competence, collaboration, or regulation? Who gets to decide what those things should look like?
Have you ever witnessed a neurodivergent person being punished, excluded, or criminalized for behavior that was simply different or misunderstood? What happened? What was your role?
What forms of behavior are pathologized under the guise of "safety" or "respectability"? Whose comfort is prioritized when “safety” is invoked?
Have you ever been in a situation where maintaining your integrity or regulation required you to say no, opt out, stim, cry, or express distress and were penalized for it?
What unspoken expectations around eye contact, tone, stillness, facial expression, or verbal fluency exist in your environment? Who struggles under those expectations?
How do systems of education, employment, and healthcare reward compliance and punish resistance? Can you name examples from your own experience?
When someone challenges or resists normative behavior standards, how does your community respond? Are they supported, gaslit, punished, or excluded?
What would shift if we replaced a culture of compliance with a culture of consent, care, and access intimacy?
How are compliance-based values (like “professionalism” or “self-regulation”) racialized, gendered, and classed? Who is most likely to be punished for nonconformity?
What parts of yourself have you had to hide in order to be accepted as "cooperative" or "emotionally appropriate"? What did that hiding feel like?
What would it look like to design spaces where people do not have to perform safety in order to be safe?