You'd think electrically punishing children, as ways of getting their attention, would be outlawed by now in America -- but you would be wrong. You would have thought this would have come up before now -- and it has, over and over. And you know: The shocks still go on and on.
My first nudge in the direction of the Judge Rotenberg Center, the JRC, came in an email today, asking for my support, on a petition at Change.org. It began:
"Hi, my name is Gregory Miller. I used to work at a school in Massachusetts named [the JRC] where we used powerfully painful electric shock devices (45-91 milliamps at 66 volts) on students to control their behaviors.
These devices are much stronger than police stun guns (1-4 milliamps). Unlike stun guns, the electrodes most commonly used at school are spaced 3-4 inches apart so that the electrical volts passing through the flesh create the maximum amount of pain with those amps and volts.