Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/35

Rh with food, drugs, and sanitation. What I wanted to accomplish was to add mental health to these categories."

"I have seen many juvenile delinquents who were predisposed to achieving good things in life and were deflected from their course by the social environment of which comic books are a part. We would not by law permit people to sell bad candy with poisonous ingredients because the manufacturer guarantees that it will not hurt children with strong stomachs and will sicken only those children who are inclined to have stomach upsets in the first place. In public health we also have little sympathy with the claim that we don't have to prevent illness because if we rule out one factor people would get sick sooner or later anyhow, if not with this disease, then with something else. Yet that is how the comic-book industry reasons."

, Why we have not solved the delinquency problem, Federal probation (Washington) v. 27, Dec. 1953: 11–19.

(Mr. Solomon is editor of Youth Leaders Digest, Putnam Valley, N. Y.)

This writer contends that the only way to solve the delinquency problem among youngsters is though prevention. He also holds that there are nine "fallacies" which are generally believed by persons who are concerned over the problem.

He has this to say about fallacy No. 2:

"Comics create crime. It is common practice to blame the comics, TY, the radio, and movies for much of our delinquency. It is pointed out that some youngsters are highly 'suggestible' and that through these media they might learn the methods of crime and how to skillfully avoid detection, Maybe so, but I'd like to point out that all children listen to the radio, see TY, and the movies, and read the comics, and that 99 percent of them don't get into any kind of trouble. And it might further be pointed out that we've had lots of delinquency long before these things came into being."

Mr. . I also have a compendium of the Journal of Educational Sociology which shows the result of comics on delinquency by Dr. Thrasher, who is a noted criminologist connected with the University of Chicago.

The. Without objection, that will be made a part of the record. Let that be exhibit No. 3.

(The article referred to was marked "Exhibit No. 3," and reads as follows:)

Expert students of mankind have always tried to explain human behavior in terms of their own specialties. This is particularly true in the field of adult and juvenile delinquency, where anthropologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists have been guilty of a long series of erroneous attempts Lo attribute crime and delinquency to some one human trait or environmental condition. These monistic theories of delinquency causation illustrate a particularistic fallacy stems from professional bias or a lack of scientific logic and research, or both.

Most recent error of this type is that if psychiatrist Fredric Wertham who claims in effect that the comics are an important factor in causing juvenile delinquency. This extreme position which is not substantiated by any valid research, is not only contrary to considerable current psychiatric thinking, but also disregards tested research procedures which have discredited numerous previous monistic theories of delinquency causation. Wertham's dark picture of the influence of comics