Judge Rotenberg Center

## Overview

The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) is an institutional treatment center and day school in Canton, Massachusetts for individuals aged 5 through adulthood who require services related to developmental, emotional, and behavioral disabilities. The center’s approach to treatment is centered on behavior modification through methods of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and aversion therapy. Although the JRC claims that it largely utilizes a form of ABA called Positive Behavior Support and only employs aversive conditioning as a last resort, multiple state-led investigations noted no significant evidence of an established positive behavioral support and that the center heavily relied on aversive conditioning strategies for even minor behavioral issues.

The center is best known for its use of one such aversive conditioning called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED), a device invented by the center’s founder Matthew Israel for use on students in his facility. The GED is a device worn by residents at all times, and it can administer shocks through electrodes attached to the skin by remote control operated by staff or through automation for certain target behaviors. The JRC has been denounced for engaging in torture by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture for use of the GED.

## Matthew Israel

Matthew Israel is the founder of the Judge Rotenberg Center and inventor of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator.

### Early Life

Israel was raised in Massachusetts, the youngest of two boys. Israel endorsed being spanked once or twice as a child and would occasionally be put in time-out. When asked if punishment received a lot of emphasis in his parents' approach to raising him, he said "Oh no, it was just normal. I was very fortunate in family life. They were very good to me, very good to me."

### Education and Early Career

Israel studied under Skinner at Harvard University, obtaining hid undergraduate and graduate degrees between 1950 to 1960. Israel developed a passionate interest in behavioral psychology and behavior modification after reading B.F. Skinners 1948 novel Walden Two, a novel about the concept of determinism and the use of behavioral conditioning through reward and punishment in pursuit of creating a utopian society. This passion quickly grew to be his driving and guiding principle for life and his career.

Israel founded the Association for Social Design shortly after completing his Ph.D. under the tutelage of his idol B. F. Skinner. This was a step towards achieving his dream of being able to build a utopia inspired by Skinners' novel. Israel and his colleagues in the Association for Social Design developed plans for starting a commune where they could employ behavioral conditioning and control methods to train residents by the principles of Walden Two. The methods described in Walden Two did not exist at the time of publication, but they are now known as belonging to an approach called Applied Behavioral Analysis.

Israel's first attempts at creating his dream utopia were entirely unsuccessful, the first one started in 1967 in Arlington, Massachusetts and the second in Boston, Massachusetts. Israel intended to remain true to the principles outlined in Skinners' novel, performing experiments on residents on the commune to explore how to control, shape, and manage behaviors in service of his utopia. This included running experiments on a three-year-old child living in the home, attempting at first to control the child's behavioral development through reward but changing tactics to utilize punishment when he did not see sufficient progress in the child. His first punishment for her was slapping her in the face when he was frustrated by her screaming while in time-out. He would go back into her room and snap her cheek every time she made noise until she stopped crying for sufficiently long periods of time. Israel acknowledged that introducing punishment into the experiments diverted him from Skinners' Walden Two. Israel explained in an interview with Mother Jones magazine in 2007, "Skinner had not really been a proponent of punishment. His Walden Two was a world where reward was used so skillfully that you didn’t need to ever punish. And he said of punishment that it works temporarily but in the long run it has—he related a lot of the problems people had to punishment early in life." When both communes and the Society for Social Design all failed, Israel decided he wanted to start a school to be able to apply his theories for behavior modification on children with developmental disorders and severely impairing mental illnesses.

### Removal from Leadership at JRC

Matthew Israel was indicted by grand jury in 2011 on criminal obstruction of justice charges related to intentionally interfering with a child endangerment investigation being conducted against the center. He admitted to destroying video evidence of two children receiving electrical shocks, evidence that he had been specifically instructed by the state police to keep pending the investigation. On May 25, 2011, Israel was sentenced through plea deal to five years of pretrial probation, and he was required to dissolve all relationship with the JRC. This led to him stepping down from his positive as executive director on June 1, 2011.

## History of the Center

### The Behavior Research Institute

Matthew Israel founded the Behavior Research Institute (later to be named the Judge Rotenberg Center) in 1971 in Providence, Rhode Island, as he knew that being able to run his own program would allow him to practice with fewer restrictions dictating what kinds of treatment he could employ in pursuit of behavior modification. He utilized a wide array of aversive methods to attempt to control behavior by punishment, including breaking ammonia vials under children's noses, spraying children in the face with water, spankings, pinching the soles of their feet, muscle squeezes, hitting them in the face with flat instruments and more.

By 1988, Israel had grown concerned that his inability to ensure that he staff members were enacting punishments at the same levels, such as slapping a child with a spatula with equal strength, would result in inconsistencies that compromised his intervention approach. He also was frustrated by increasing incidents of staff members getting injured in struggles with children while trying to deliver punishments. Matthew Israel then chose to incorporate the use of the Self-Injurious

## Contemporary JRC

### Behavior Modification

The Judge Rotenberg Center utilizes a behaviorist approach with foundational concepts of Applied Behavioral Analysis.

#### Aversion Therapy

Aversion Therapy is a type of operant conditioning intervention through the use of positive punishments, adding discomfort or a negative stimulus to try to reduce an unwanted behavior.

## Controversies

### Patient Deaths

#### Robert Cooper

Robert Cooper died in 1980 at 25-years-old due to hemorrhagic bowel obstruction while residing at the BRI program in Providence, RI. Cooper had autism and physical disabilities. He had been at BRI for two years leading up to his death, during which time he endured aversives such as spankings, muscle squeezes, pinching, frigid showers, and being sprayed in the face with water. His death was ruled to be of natural causes, and the BRI was not held at fault. They did face criticism, however, for having a staff member drive him to the hospital during the acute medical crisis rather than calling an ambulance.

#### Danny Aswad

Danny Aswad, a child with an intellectual disorder, died at 14-years-old in 1981 while being restrained to his bed face down without staff supervision. The program was using restraints without authorization from the state oversight agencies, and in inquest into the death found that the facility had broken the law by using restraints. Following a jury trial, the official cause of death was found to be natural causes related to his disability. Although there was generally agreement that the restraints and aversive therapies likely played a role, it was not something that the medical examiner felt he could prove in court.

#### Vincent Milletich

Vicent Milletich, a young adult with Autism, died at 22-years-old in 1985. He was restrained at the time of his death and wearing a specially designed sensory-deprivation helmet that emitted static white-noise. Milletich was known by the program to have significant medical history of epilepsy. He died of asphyxiation following a seizure.

#### Andre McCollins

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 www.judgerc.org
2. ↑ Kindlon, R., Bandini, S., Suriano, C., Tyner-Doyle, P., Magyar, C.I., Crimmins, D.B., & Roll, D. (2006). Observations and Findings of Out-of-State Program Visitation Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.
3. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/mar/12/electric-shock-school-matthew-israel
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Nisbet, J., & Weiss, N. R. (2021). Pain and Shock in America: Politics, Advocacy, and the Controversial Treatment of People with Disabilities. Brandeis University Press
5. ↑ Pilkington, E. (2020). *US bans shock "treatment" on children with special needs at Boston-area school.* The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/matthew-israel-interviewed-jennifer-gonnerman/
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/3/9/new-walden-ii-will-open-in/
8. ↑ Skinner, B.F. (1986). "Some Thoughts About the Future". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 45(2).
9. ↑ https://www.wbur.org/news/2011/05/26/rotenberg
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock/
11. ↑ Jenkins, H. M. "Animal Learning and Behavior Theory" Ch. 5 in Hearst, E. "The First Century of Experimental Psychology" Hillsdale N. J., Earlbaum, 1979
12. ↑ https://www.autistichoya.com/2013/02/a-glimpse-into-judge-rotenberg-centers.html