In Ron's Journal '68, L. Ron Hubbard cancelled the practice of disconnection (this passage was extracted from the audio transcript beginning at 26:35 through 28:05):
“You probably read something about the Reform Code, the Reform Code of Scientology. We sent out actually, I think, oh I don’t know the total international figure, I think in England alone, it was 100,000 mailing and we received back anything that the people thought should be corrected.
“And this resulted in the Reform Code, in which the sec checks were cancelled and all old folders on this had been burned, and disconnection is cancelled as a relief to those suffering family oppression. It is no longer required in SP orders, and the person has to handle. The Fair Game Law was cancelled and the prohibition against writing down or recording professional materials was made. And this was actually the extent of the Reform Code.
“The public at large generally thought we were all right. We didn’t have to do anything more, but these were just the small items that they did say, so we released them as a Reform Code.”
What was cancelled was the use of disconnection as a political weapon, a means of control. Now the pendulum swung to the other extreme and so, throughout the '70s and '80s, if a Scientologist had a situation with a real SP, disconnection was prohibited! That created severe problems for some people who had legitimate situations with real SPs. At some point LRH commented on this in an advice and the result was that disconnection was restored in the new version of the book, introduction to Scientology Ethics. This meant if someone in your family was a thief and stole jewelery from your wife every time he came over, it was now okay to disconnect from him and stop inviting him over. LRH said NOTHING about reinstating disconnection as a political tool, a punishment assigned by senior management to anyone it does not like such as people attempting to expose vicious crimes.
Today Miscavige has taken the practice of disconnection far beyond the very worst of 1968. He has literally declared thousands and thousands of people since the late 1980s — especially anyone who recognized him as a sociopath (suppressive person). The Indie 500 List is an effort to break the back of disconnection by creating a better network of friends outside the Church than exists inside.