Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Aversives that are used to modify behavior include: food deprivation, restraint, solitary confinement, and their own patented Graduated Electronic Decelerator GED skin shock Device.

The Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED) is an aversive conditioning device that is being used on students with developmental disabilities, emotional disorders and on the autism spectrum at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC). It delivers a powerful and painful skin shock to residents who behave in ways that are deemed inappropriate by staff at the center in order to modify behavior.

The GED has been known to burn skin and is traumatic for those exposed to the device. Delivering a 90 mA shock, the GED device is many times stronger than a police taser (3-4 mA shock) and is worn 24/7 including during sleep & shower. People are forced to wear up to five devices at a time.

The center often claims that it uses Aversives only as a last resort against self-harm and aggression despite reports that have surfaced of residents being shocked for reasons unrelated to self-injurious or aggressive behavior, including minor infractions including: Noises or movements made because of their disability, Screaming in pain while being shocked, Flapping their hands, standing up, not taking off a coat, Failing to be neat, etc.

Antecedent Behavior means “coming before,” an undesired behavior. It can be any event or environmental factor that occurs before a behavior, prompting that behavior. Examples of antecedents at the JRC may include: Swearing, raising a hand, standing up etc…

The JRC defends its use of aversives for reasons other than in response to an immediate threat of harm. They believe punishing antecedent behaviors is necessary in order to both protect other people in the facility and to effectively deter students from engaging in target behaviors.”

Former JRC employee Gregory Miller told the FDA panel “students often sustained burns so severe from the GED devices they were placed on “GED vacation” to allow their skin to begin to heal. Most often students still had
scabs on their skin after the five to six weeks of GED vacation were over.

By the term “behaviors” we include externally-observed behaviors such as overt actions as well as internal behaviors that are more difficult to observe, such as thoughts, feelings, emotions and urges.

We have found it convenient to categorize problematic behaviors as belonging to one of seven broad categories, which are these: 

1. Health Dangerous (includes self-abusive actions such as hitting self) 
2. Aggressive 
3. Destroying 
4. Noncompliance 
5. Major disruptive behaviors 
6. Educationally and Socially-Interfering behaviors 
7. Inappropriate Verbal Behaviors
   

If a particular student needs more than these seven standard categories, additional categories are created. And if a clinician wishes to divide one of these categories into smaller sub-categories, he/she may do this.

In each lesson, we required the individual to engage in the beginning phase of one of the self-abusive actions in which he had previously engaged. For example, we required him to pick up a plastic knife and bring it toward his skin to try to cut himself. We forced him to do this even if he resisted. As soon as he engaged in this beginning form of the behavior, we administered the GED.

JRC, currently operates under the protection of a thirty-six year old consent decree. That decree was entered, and has remained in place, after State agencies resorted to bad faith regulatory practices to disrupt JRC’s operations in the 1980s and 1990s preventing the Dept. from banning the device for 36 years since the Consent Decree was implemented. The State agencies that remain bound by the decree have since moved for its termination without success.

This battle to protect our most vulnerable citizens has been fought  by state agencies, politicians, human rights orgs, and hundreds of advocates, spanning across not only the USA but the world for decades. In 2013 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded that the GED violates the UN Convention Against Torture. The Association For Behavior Analyst International (ABAI)  stated “we strongly oppose the use of contingent electric skin shock (CESS) under any condition”. Regardless of these statements, over the past few years, many attempts have been hit with roadblocks by our state courts and politicians. 

“The Department of Developmental Services (DDS) recognizes that families of those receiving Skin Shocks believe it to be the only effective form of treatment for their loved one(s).

While the Department does not agree, the history of extensive litigation over access to painful stimuli as treatment should not and need not be repeated here.”