Torture not Treatment - Disability Rights International

TORTURE NOT TREATMENT
Following the release of the NYSED report on JRC in 2006, the New York Psychological
Association Task Force found that
―some of the techniques described as „aversive behavioral interventions‟ not only
constitute corporal punishment, but are included in literature on torture
techniques… 47
While the infliction of pain may stop a person from engaging in a specific behavior while being
subject to a course of aversive treatment, aversive treatment cannot treat an underlying emotional
disorder or intellectual disability. A review of the research found that ―the implementation of
punishment-based procedures, including those that incorporate noxious stimulation, do not
guarantee long-term reductive effects in the treatment of severe disorders.‖ 48 The alleviation of
symptoms only takes place while aversives are in place, leaving a person subject to this painful
treatment over a long period of time. This is why JRC has had to create increasingly strong
systems for administering pain and shock. JRC‘s website candidly acknowledges that aversives
only bring about the temporary alleviation of symptoms:
Expecting an aversive consequence to keep having its effect long after we have stopped
using it is to criticize aversives for something that we have no right to expect them to
do. 49
One study examined a sample of five adults with developmental disabilities who had been
subjected to an aversive program of electric shock, mechanical restraints, and food deprivation.
This study found that the same individuals could be served in the community over two years,
with the same alleviation of symptoms, using only positive behavioral supports.
The results are encouraging in demonstrating that punishment-based approaches can
be terminated, alternative strategies can be substituted, and through a clinically
responsive system of monitoring and decision-making, behavioral adjustment can be
supported without having to resort to invasive forms of treatments. 50
MDRI has interviewed providers who serve individuals once detained at JRC, and their
experience is consistent with the findings of this research. Contrary to the notion that only JRC
can serve the most disabled individuals, other programs are able to serve the same people
without aversives:
I was touring JRC and saw a little boy, maybe 6 or 8 years old, laying on the floor and
shackled and handcuffed behind his back. We do not use mechanical restraints here
ever! When people are given what they need, they don‟t act out. – MDRI interview with
director of group homes for people with developmental disabilities serving former JRC
residents 51
11