Should shock therapy such as that used at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton be more tightly regulated?

As a Judge with the Mass. trial Court and Prior to retiring in 1995, I heard a majority of those cases at the "Clinic".
And although there might have been some abuses, the treatment received at the "Clinic" were immensely beneficial to most of those patients needing help.
So I say yes the shock therapy treatments could use more transparency but
the treatment facility is desparately needed to help the patients who are in need.

I agree with the judge. JRC exists to treat the most desperate people, a tiny fraction of one percent of special ed students who have severe behavioral problems which make them dangerous to themselves and/or others. Generally, when a person is recommended for the electric shock as a behavior modification therapy -- which I have tried and found that it cured my tendinitis and is in no way hurtful, albeit uncomfortable by design -- all other approaches have failed. The alternative to the shock for this small group of people is inhuman. They are drugged to a stupor and held in restraints often risking deadly embolism. Until psychiatry can find a better treatment, the electric skin shock that the JRC offers, is the best we have.

Research has shown that positive reinforcement is effective and aversives are not. The New York Education Department's review of the research literature on aversives also came to this conclusion. Without research validation, the use of aversives on children is not ethical. Use of aversives would therefore pose a problem if you had to defend it in court.

Without established benefit, use of "skin shock" is technically torture (defined as inflicting physical and emotion pain for a purpose) and a violation of the Nuremberg Code. Because public funds pay for shocking, it is also a violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Why do the legislators give such power to a handful of parents who claim -- anecdotally -- that this extreme practice helps their children. They cannot know that shocking, versus something else, such as simple maturation, is leading to the change. Therapeutic effect can only be determined through careful research that is subjected to peer-review.