As TFTP reported, in 2018, Family Court Judge Katherine Field denied a motion to stop the use of electric shock on disabled students, a form of punishment that has been controversial for years after news of the practice first reached the public in 2013 when video surfaced of an 18-year-old student receiving dozens of shocks for refusing to take off his jacket.
“(The state) failed to demonstrate that there is now a professional consensus that the Level III aversive treatment used at JRC does not conform to the accepted standard of care for treating individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” Judge Field wrote in her decision.
The facility in question is the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC), a special needs day and residential school in Canton, and it is the only school in the country that was still using electric shocks on its students. Records show that at least 58 students at the school have received shocks as of August 2017.
People living at JRC aren’t just from Massachusetts. According to The Guardian, they come from 15 states including Massachusetts, New York, Illinois and California. In 2014, ProPublica found that New York taxpayers spend $30 million a year sending children from their state to the Massachusetts school.
Hellbound and Down 