Study: Shock Gloves Traumatized Army Volunteers

An electric shock glove demonstration during a news conference at the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office Headquarters, Sacramento, California, August 27, 2026.Ziyu Julian Zhu/Zuma Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. A newly released military study paints a frightening picture of the electric shock gloves ICE recently purchased by the thousands—and which the agency and its acting head David Venturella seem eager to deploy regardless of the potential consequences. Records unearthed by the watchdog group American Oversight and first shared with the Associated Press show that in one set of trials carried out by the US Army in 2024, the electric shock gloves caused “overwhelmingly immediate” pain to soldiers playing the role of combative inmates in a mock forced cell extraction scenario, who then reported that “just seeing the glove” frightened them into obedience. GLOVEs, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, are taser-like devices that look like standard work gloves, but deliver a painful electric charge when the wearer touches a person’s skin. As I’ve previously reported, they’ve been described as “low optics”—police language for a weapon that causes harm but doesn’t leave marks, making it harder for victims to sue or for public outrage to stem from visible harm. Two weeks ago, the shock gloves’ manufacturer, Jeff Niklaus, called the devices the “safest, most humane deescalatory product probably ever to come along.” The Army study found that the gloves caused “intense pain,” but didn’t significantly change the amount of time it took to control a combative prisoner, or transfer someone from one unit to another. In one trial, a participant accidentally turned the shock gloves on; in another, “inmates” were able to fight off “guards” wearing the gloves for longer than they were able to hold off unarmed ones. People with water or oil on their skin felt more pain when shocked, and one participant reported lingering pain for 30 minutes afterward. Soldiers, once shocked, were terrified to be shocked again. Army investigators reported “fatigue, soreness, and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again” in the soldiers playing inmates—and noted that the shock gloves gave a confidence boost to those who were playing guards, especially “smaller or less trained members.” The gloves, the study concluded, should be deployed in military prisons. In September, ICE finalized its purchase of 6,650 pairs of the shock gloves for $16.7 million from Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies. White House border czar Tom Homan said in August that it could “be a while” before the gloves are in use in the field. But ICE, according to the Associated Press, was already well aware of the Army study when it chose to purchase the gloves.