Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/29

Rh , "The Comics and Delinquency: Cause or Scapegoat", The Journal of Educational Sociology, December 1949, pp. 195–205.


 * (The author at the time of writing this article was a professor at New York University. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Educational Sociology and author of the Gang, a study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. 1927.)

Dr. Thrasher says that the controversy over motion pictures as a major cause of delinqrency closely parallels the present eoutroversy over the role of comic books in the causation of antisocial behavior.

"Delinquent and criminal careers can be understood only in terms of the interaction of many factors. Evaluation of their relative influence demands research based upon more rigorous sampling and control, and requires the utmost ohjectively in the interpretation of the data the research yields.

"After surveying the studies dealing with the influence of comics we are forced to conclude such researches do not exist. The current alarm over the evil effects of the comic books rests upan nothing more substantial than the opintou and conjecture of a number of psychiatrists, lawyers, and judges.

"Reduced to their simplest terms, these arguments are that since the movies and comics diet is nade up of crime, violence, horror, and sex, the children who see the movies and read the comies are uecessarily stimulated to the performance of delinquent acts, cruelty, vielence, and undesirable sex behavior.

"As an example, let us examine the position of the leading crusader against the comics, New York's psychiatrist Frederic Wertbam. [He] disclaims the belief that delinquency can have a single cause and claims to adhere to the concept of multiple and complex causation of delinquent behavior. But in effect his arguments do attribute a large portion of juvenile offenses to the comics. More pointedly he maintains that the comics in a complex maze of other factors are frequently the precipitating cause of delinquency.

"We may criticize Wertham's conclusions on many grounds, but the major weakness of his position is that it is not supported by research data. In Collier's March 27, 1948, his findings are said to be the result of 2 years' study couducted by him and 11 other psychiatrists and social workers at the Lefarge Clinic in New York's Harlem. In this article the claim is made that numerous children both delinquent and nondelinquent, rich and poor were studied and that the results of these studies led to the major conclusion that the effect of comic books is 'definitely and completely harmful'."

Wertham's major claims rest only on a few selected and extreme cases of children's deviate behavior where it is said the comics have played an important role in producing delinquency. Although Wertham bas claimed in his various writings that he and his associates have studied thousands of children, normal and deviate, rich and poor, gifted and mediocre, he presents no statistical summary of his investigations. He makes no attempt to substantiate that his illustrative cases are in any way typical of all delinquents who read comics, or that delinquents who do not read the comics do not commit similar types of offenses. He claims to use control groups (nondelinquents), but he does not describe these controls, how they were set up, how they were equated with his experimental groups (delinquents) to assure that the difference in incidence of comic book reading, if any, was due to anything more than a selective process brought about by the particular area in which he was working.

"On the basis of the material presented by Wertham with reference to children's experience with the comics, it is doubtful if he has met the requirements of scientific case study or the criteria for handling live history materials. He does not describe his techniques or show how they were set up so as to safeguard his findings against invalid conclusions. * * * Unless and until Wertham's methods of investigation are described, and demonstrated to he valid and reliable, the scientific worker in this field can place no credence in his results.

"In conclusion, it may be said that no acceptable evidence has been produced by Wertham or anyone else for the conclusion that the reading of comic magazines has or has not a significant relation to delinquent behavior."

"1949" (a survey by the children's book committee of the Child Study Association). Child Study, fall 1949, pp. 120–142.

"In the hope of providing an answer * * * the children's book committee of the Child Study Association some years ago surveyed about a hundred comic magazines and published in Child Study a critique of these for the guidance of parents and others working with children. The enormous growth of these