Juvenile delinquency (1955)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

226 JUVENILE DELINQUENCY Mr. Jacobs. My name is Pan] Jacobs, and I am the chairman of the censorship committee of the American Civil Liberties Union in southern California. Chairman Kefauver. Are you a lawyer? Mr. Jacobs. No, I am a writer by trade, by profession. Chairman Kefauver. Yon are chairman of the censorship com- mittee of the Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Jacobs. Yes. The Civil Liberties Union has a censorship com- mittee whose function it is to investigate cases of alleged censorship, illegal censorship. We are concerned with censorship of books in school libraries. We are concerned with the censorship of films. We are concerned with the censorship of comic books, and we are con- cerned with the relationship between all of these and juvenile delinquency. I should like to state the Civil Liberties Union doesn't profess to be a group of sociologists or experts in juvenile delinquency. Our concern, our interest, and our knowledge is restricted to civil liberties, but we are rather deeply concerned over the professed relationship between films and comic books and juvenile delinquency. The Civil Liberties Union isn't prepared to accept the concept of censorship for these media based on Vv'iiat we believe to be as yet rather uncertain knowledge of the real effect of comic books or films, even of the kind described here, upon juvenile delinquency. It seems to us that there are at least three points of view. Chairman Kefauver. Well, Mr. Jacobs, I thought you said you didri't know anything about the sociological or the psychiatric effects of these things upon juveniles. Mr. Jacobs. No, I don't profess to, but I am willing to concede Chairman Kefauver. If you don't profess to, how do you get into the field of being willing to—you say it hasn't been shown to you—if you don't pretend to know anything about it ? Mr. Jacobs. Well, because the Civil Liberties Union and I have made some study of the varying statements in this field. There are eminent sociologists and psychologists who believe that there is a relationship between juvenile delinquency and comic books. There are equally eminent sociologists and psychologists who believe that no such relationship exists. Chairman Kefauver. Who are those ? Mr. Jacobs. Well, I'll be glad to give you some names. In the first group, the group who believe that there is a relationship Chairman Kefauver. We know all of them. Mr. Jacobs. In the second group there are a group of people who take the position that there is some relationship but not a very sig- nificant relationship between the reading of comic books and Chairman Kefauver. Wlio are the ones who say there is no rela- tionship ? Mr. Jacobs. Those who say there is no relationship are Filip Och- ard, a French sociologist, who published a book called The Child's Voice. There is Charles Glock who is director of the Bureau of Ap- plied Research at Columbia University. There is Eric Ericson who is senior staff member of the Austin Riggs Center, Avhich is a center dealing with juvenile delinquency. There is Eldon Winsto" of the North Carolina State Board of Public Welfare. There is Wallace