A New York agency is calling for an end to some of the controversial electric shock treatments administered to clients from that state at a local school for the disabled.

A report by a New York state agency on conditions at a local school for the disabled documented `` skin shocks'' -- sometimes administered while students bathed -- for offenses as minor as nagging, swearing and sloppy appearance.

`` Various injuries to students have been reported'' at the Judge Rotenberg Center, according to the report released Wednesday by the New York Education Department.

The school, founded in Providence and now based in Canton, has group homes in the Attleboro area. It is named for the late Judge Ernest Rotenberg of Attleboro, who ruled in favor of allowing the shock treatments.

The Rotenberg Center receives $50 million a year from the state of New York to care for and educate about 150 youths because there is no space available in New York for the intensive treatment. The New York Education Department is calling for corrective action. The school must `` cease certain interventions that threaten the health and safety of students at the school. Failure to do so would affect its approval to serve New York state students,'' according to a written statement.

The study also criticized the school's `` combined use of mechanical restraints and simultaneous application of skin shock'' to some students. In addition, `` many students were observed as they arrived to and from school wearing leg and wrist restraints.''

In addition, the Education Department said workers at the center weren't prepared or trained to handle `` challenging emotional and behavioral problems'' of the youths.

The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the `` aversive therapy'' of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The weekly shock of one or two seconds each is similar to being pinched as hard as possible, or like a bee sting.

There was no immediate comment about the report from the school.

For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where disabled students wear backpack-like devices that provide shocks of varying duration when they misbehave.

The use of electric shocks for corporal punishment is illegal in New York state, but New Yorkers can be subject to the practice at Rotenberg with the approval of parents, the local New York school district, and a court. The Rotenberg Center has been on the New York Education Department's list of schools approved for the disabled, where New York's autistic and other disabled youths can be sent because of a shortage of facilities in New York.

Some New York parents said electric shock helped change their children's behavior for the better. Some of the youths had repeatedly bitten themselves or slammed their heads against walls so violently there was a concern they could blind themselves. Billy's Law, passed last year in Albany, seeks to eventually return to New York the 1,000 disabled youths now treated in other states because of bed shortages.