Up to the beginning of the comic-book era there were hardly any serious crimes such as murder by children under twelve. Yet there was a world war and a long depression. So we adults who permit comic books are accessories. Speaking of just such crimes, however, a Municipal Court judge defends crime comics in Parents Magazine with these three standard hypocritical arguments: "First of all, censorship would be worse"; "second, here is danger in overprotecting our children"; third, "violence and brutality are a part of the pattern of our lives."

It is becoming more and more apparent that what all delinquent children have in common is unprotectedness. I have found in every delinquent child that at one time or another he had insufficient protection. That implies not only material flings, but social and psychological influences. Of course children get hurt at home and by their parents. But the time when children in the mass are most defenseless, when they are most susceptible to influences from society at large, is in their leisure hours. And children's leisure is on the market. . . .

The average parent has no idea that every imaginable crime is described in detail in comic books. That is their main stock in trade. When questioned more closely even experts who have defended the industry did not know what an endless variety of crimes is described in detail in story after story, picture after picture. If one were to set out to show children how to steak rob, lie, cheat, assault and break into houses, no better method could be devised. It is of course easy and natural for the child to translate these crimes into a minor key: stealing from a candy store instead of breaking into a bank; stabbing and hurting a little girl with a sharp pen if a knife is not handy; beating and threatening younger children, following the Superman formula of winning by force. . . .

The contempt for law and police and the brutality of punishment in comic books is subconsciously translated by children into conflict with authority, and they develop a special indifference to it. Gerald, a boy of eleven, stole from stores with a group of older boys. One night after such an exploit two policemen followed them. Gerald had a B.B. gun, turned around and shot at one of the policemen. He was charged with armed robbery. When the whole group was in Children's Court the judge talked to them very seriously. Gerald told us all about that. "Didn't you feel strange in court?" he was asked. "No," he replied. "I read the comics and I feel I am used to it."

Taking into account every conceivable possibility, comic books present the details of how to commit crimes, how to conceal evidence, how to evade detection, how to hurt people. In a recent comic book which has the "Seal of Approval of Comics Magazine Publishers," and is sold in New York Subways, you learn that after a robbery you can escape more easily if you shoot out the source of light; you learn how to trade in guns; how to hijack ammunition; how to impersonate regular soldiers (I have had several cases of young people doing just that); and, of course, how to torture and kill a "squealer. . . ."

One story gives a price list for hurting people in the protection racket:

• EYES BLACKENED $4.00
• ARM OR LEG BROKEN $10.00
• WHOLE JOB $100.00 and Up

Another comic book shows how a youngster can murder for profit. He gets a job as a caddy, loses the ball, then kills the player when he goes searching for it.

Many comic books describe how to set fires, by methods too various to enumerate. In some stories fire-setting is related just as a detail; in other stories such as "The Arson Racket" the lesson is more systematic. There are other sidelights, like how to break windows so you cannot be found out; all this highlighted by the philosophy of the character who says: "From now on I'm making dough the easy way -- with a gun! Only SAPS work!" That lesson, incidentally, is true of crime comics as a whole: glamour for crime, contempt for work.

All this is only a small sample from my collection and an infinitesimal part of the whole story. Juvenile delinquency is not just a prank nor an "emotional illness." The modern and more serious forms of delinquency involve knowledge of technique. By showing the technique, comic books also suggest the content. The moral lesson is that "innocence doesn't pay. . . ."

If it were the aim of adults to tempt children as persistently, as clearly and as graphically as possible, they would have to invent the comic-book industry. When I first announced my findings that these comic books are primers for crime, I was greeted with these arguments:

1. It is not true. Only the rarest comic book does that.
2. It is not true any more, though it may have been true in the past. Now that is all changed.
3. If true, it was always thus.
4. Crime comic books have no effect at all on children's behavior.
5. Crime comic books are a major force in preventing juvenile delinquency.
6. Crime comic books are not read by children, but only by adults.
7. Comic books affect only "emotionally unstable" or "insecure" children and not the average child.

All these arguments have influenced the public. That they are self-contradictory was evidently overlooked or forgiven. . . .

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.

Our researches have proved that there is a significant correlation between crime-comics reading and the more serious forma of juvenile delinquency. Many children read only few comics, read them for only a short time, read the better type (to the extent that there is a better type) and do not become imbued with the whole crime-comics atmosphere. Those children, on the other hand, who commit the more serious types of delinquency nowadays, read a lot of comic books, go in for the worst type of crime comics, read them for a long time and live in thought in the crime-comics world. 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. Supposing you wanted to prevent promiscuous, illegitimate sexual relations, would you publish millions of books showing in detail where and how the man picks up the girl, where they go, the details of their relationships in bed and then how the next morning somebody breaks into their romp and tosses them out of bed? A comic-book defender would say this teaches that "Sex does not pay. . . ."

A fifteen-year-old boy was accused of having shot and killed a boy of fourteen (the authorities chose to consider this accidental), of having thrown a cat from a roof, of having thrown a knife through a boy's foot, of sadistic acts with younger children, of having shot at a younger girl with a B.B. gun. After a full study of the psychological and social background, we came to the conclusion that the fact that he was an inveterate reader| of comic books was an important contributing factor. His favorite comic book, read over and over, contained no less thank eighty-one violent acts, including nineteen murders.

Even if the Howard Lang case had been the only one - there were many others - it should have been enough to make adults take steps against crime comics. This thirteen-year-old boy killed seven-year-old Lonnie in a dreadful fashion. In a lonely wood he stabbed him many times with a pocket knife, choked him, stamped and jumped on him, and then dropped on his face four times heavy blocks of concrete. After this, with the help of another boy, he hid the still-living victim under a heap of leaves. Lonnie lived another twelve to fourteen hours before finally dying im agony. The judge in the case, Judge Daniel Roberts, commented especially on the influence of crime comic books on Howard. He took judicial notice of twenty-six of the boy's comic books and stated that they showed "the homicidal, near-homicidal and brutal attacks upon the persons of the characters depicted by means of knives, guns, poison, arrows and darts, rocks off cliffs, etc."

"It was testified," he went on, "that the defendant had observed or read these comic books since before he could actually read." Judge Roberts further characterized these comic books as "startling in the extreme, and nauseating and degrading to the moral sense. That these publications are permitted to be sold to the youth of the country is a travesty upon the country's good sense. The crime and horror comics ad extremely ugly in appearance, caused by their creators' diabolic twist of mind...something must be done...by law if the publishers will not properly censor their own work.