jQuery datatables sort not sorting string datetime correctly

Question

There was a question on SO relating to 'server-side' datatables but I'm not doing any server side in my DataTables plugin functionality.

I'm using the jquery plugin Datatables.js to do an $.ajax 'get' request, store the returned response in a hidden variable (for use later on in my application), and display the data in an html table. Everything works well except for the initial sort order, which I set to a date column. I then set the 'order' option of datatables to 'desc' (to display the date that is most recent, so October 10, 2017 would be displayed above September 26, 2017 and so on). The problem seems to be that my date response comes back in datetime format (2017-07-15 00:00:00.000), Datatables sorts it incorrectly, for example displaying 2017-10-04 00:00:00.000 AFTER 2017-07-15 00:00:00.000, instead of the other way around.

I'm not too familiar w/ datatables plugin, and was wondering if someone had a solution to fix this issue, as well as have the fix that is cross-browser as well. It would be nice if I could somehow convert this 'joined_date' field as date instead of a datetime as well. Following is the code I have:

$(document).ready(function() {

 jQuery.extend( jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort, {
  "date-uk-pre": function ( a ) {
   var ukDatea = a.split('/');
   return (ukDatea[2] + ukDatea[1] + ukDatea[0]) * 1;
   },

   "date-uk-asc": function ( a, b ) {
    return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
   },

  "date-uk-desc": function ( a, b ) {
   return ((a < b) ? 1 : ((a > b) ? -1 : 0));
  }
  } );
 $.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url: "https://sonosfarm.com/prod/authors.cfc?method=Authors",
    dataType: "json",
    cache: false,
    success: function(response){
        if(response.length != 0){
            $("#authorsHiddenVar").val("");
            $("#authorsHiddenVar").val(JSON.stringify(response));
            $("#Authors").DataTable({
                data: response,
                columns:[
                    {
                        data: 'author_id',
                        "render": function(data, type, row, meta){
                            if(type== 'display'){
                                data = '<a href="' + "author.html" + '">' + 
     data + '</a>';
                            }

                            return data;
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        data: 'joined_date' 
                    },
                    {data: 'country'}
                ],
                responsive: true,
                order: [1, 'desc']
            });

        }
        else{
            console.log("There was no response from server!");
        }
    },
    error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown){
        console.log("An Ajax server error was returned");
        console.log(XMLHttpRequest);
        console.log(textStatus);
        console.log(errorThrown);
    }
 });

});