Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/34

22 York area the listener had the pick of more than 75 periods a week when a taste of life outside the law could be had.

No acceptable evidence io date has shown these factors to have a significant relation Lo delinquent behavior. To be sure, in isolated instances judges have reported commissions af youth where comic hooks have been named as the source of the idea. But upon further investigation such youngsters were found to need help beside and beyond scrutiny of their reading and listening habits.

"The foregoing statements do not condone the cultivation of low tastes nor condemn the legitimate realization that some persons gain from an occasional detective story. Regardless of such considerations, the development of good communication tastes is an educational goal that can stand on its own merits."

, What parents don't know about comic books. Ladies home journal (Philadelphia) Nov. 1953.

(Dr. Wertham is a psychiatrist and in this article refers to his research. work at the Lafargne Psychiatric Clinic in New York City and the Queens Mental Hygiene Clinic.)

In this article the author presents vivid illustrations from many crime comic books being read by children and adults. He contends that:

"Juvenile delinquency is not just a prank, nor an emotional illness. The modern and more serious forms of delinquency involve knowledge of techniques. By teaching the technique, comic books also teach the content."

"What is the relationship of crime-comic books to juvenile delinquency? If they would prevent juvenile delinquency there would be very little of it left. And if they were the outlet for children's primitive aggressions, this would be a generation of very subdued and controlled children. After all, at times the output of comic books has reached 850 million a year, most of them dealing with crime. The whole publicity-stunt claim that crime comics prevent juvenile delinquency is a hoax. I have not seen a single crime-comic book that would have any such effect. Nor have I ever seen a child or young adult who felt that he had been prevented from anything wrong by a comic book * * *

"The role of comic books in delinquency is not the whole nor by any means the worst harm they do to children. If is just one part of it. Many children who never become delinquent or conspicuously disturbed have been adversely affected by them.

"My investigations and those of my associates have led us, very unexpectedly at first, but conclusively us the studies went on, to the conclusion that crime comics are au important contributing factor to present-day juvenile delinquency, Not only are crime comics a contributing factor to many delinquent acts, but the type of juvenile delinquency of our tine cannot be understood unless you know what has been put into the minds of these children. It certainly is not the only factor, nor in many cases is is even the most important one; but there can be no doubt that it is the most unnecessary and least excusable one."

Dr. Wertham also discusses the elusiveness of some comic-hook publishers who goa out of business under one name and reappear as new publishing firms. He says, "This is why I have called crime-comic hooks 'hit-and-run publications.

"Crime comics create a mental atmosphere of deceit, trickery, and cruelty. Many of the children I have studied have came to grief ever it. How best to summarize the attitudes most widely played up in crime comics? One might list them in some such way as this: assertiveness, defiance, hostility, desire to destroy or hurt, search for risk and excitement, aggressiveness, destructiveness, sadism, suspiciousness, adventurousness, nonsubmission to authority. Anybody could make up such a list by going over a thousand comic books. Actually, though, this is a literal summary of the traits of typical delinquents found by the famous criminologists Sheldon and leaner Glueck in a study of 500 delinquents when compared with 500 nondelinquents. In other words, the very traits that we officially wish to avoid we unofficially inculcate."

"Legal control of comic books for children is necessary not so much on account of the question of sex, although their sexual abnormality is bad enough, but on account of their glorification of violence and crime. In my attempts to formulate the principles of a crime-comic-book law I realized that it is necessary to introduce more public health thinking for the protection of children's mental health. * * *

"Laws in the service of public health do not necessarily deal with criminal intent. They come with what the lawyers call public-welfare offenses dealing