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i) Cinema and Censorship. If the cinema were an incitement to delinquency it might be hoped that a severe censorship, above all of films reproducing crime might cause a corresponding reduction in the number of the crimes themselves.
Yet Detroit that has the high quota of 16.5 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants, has one of the severest municipal cinematographic censorships. Chicago with a quota of 15.8, enforces the following vigorous provision:
If a film or series of films for projection is immoral or obscene, or presents scenes of depravation, criminality, or tends to exalt acts of disloyalty, reproduces the acts of hanging or lynching, it will be the duty of the Police Inspector to refuse permit the projection.
On the other hand Los Angeles, the city of the cinema par excellence, has a quota of 4.7 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants.
Noteworthy among the largest cities of the South, is Memphis with a quota of 60.5 murders for every ioc,ooo inhabitants. Since the first of January 1921 Memphis has a municipal cinematographic censorship with unlimited powers that cannot only deny or suspend permits of projection, but also punish the operators, actors, scene designers or scene directors interested or having control in the censored representations. A revision of films excerised according to with such a rigid standard that it even forbade the performance of the « King of Kings » !
d) Cinema and Frequentation. Assuming a correlation between the cinema and criminality, it has been stated that the frequentation of the cinema theatres is in direct ratio to the tendency to delinquency.
The section of psychology of the University of Columbia during the summer of 1928 carried out an enquiry regarding a series of representations in which, of the 155,949 persons constituting the public of several Broadway theatres and outlying and suburban cinema halls, 49.10% were composed of men, and 50.90 % of women.
An exhaustive study on criminality by Healy and Bronner, published in 1926 under the title of « Delinquents and Criminals », gives for Chicago for every thousand youthful delinquents the ratio of 693 boys to 307 girls and for Boston the ratio of 722-278.
In the volume Criminology and Repressive Systems by John Lewis Gillin, it is affirmed that for all the territory of the United States, counting both persons arrested and those condemned, the proportion between males and females was 8.6-1. In Massachusetts, according to Edward H. Sutherland, men were arrested in a proportion 15.4 time ssuperior to women.
Frequentation of the cinema has a bearing on those few and sporadic cases in which a particular crime is attributed to the imitation of deeds shown in the cinema. In this connection it should be noted that compared with crime in general, such cases are strictly sporadic and the publicity given to them in the papers, although in keeping with the prevalent habit of putting all the blame on the cinema, is usually at variance with
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