Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents | Page 9

surface or to look beyond the factors which
came immediately to the mind of the writers or those which, from
personal experience, appeared to them to be the decisive or motivating
factors.
The way in which the Committee approached a consideration of this
problem was to distinguish between those causes which appeared to be
the precipitating causes and those which it regarded as predisposing
causes. The precipitating causes are those which are closely related in
time or circumstance to the actual misbehaviour. The predisposing
causes are those which create an emotional maladjustment in a person
and thus induce a susceptibility to the precipitating cause. For instance,
a semi-nude figure or a song with a double meaning will not incite a
properly instructed adolescent to sexual misconduct. But if by parental
neglect or failure to control a young person is predisposed to anti-social
conduct, there is danger in any form of suggestiveness.
The Committee has carefully considered many suggested causes

(whether precipitating or predisposing) and now sets out its views on
those which merit special mention.
If, as the Committee believes, immoral behaviour should be regarded as
a phase or facet of juvenile delinquency, the same influences which
tend to incite other anti-social behaviour are in operation here.
Much has been written in textbooks, in journals, and in various
scattered articles about the causes of juvenile delinquency. What
applies in other communities, and in other aspects of juvenile
delinquency, must apply with much the same force in this Dominion as
elsewhere, and to the sexual deviant as to all other juvenile delinquents.
In searching for the real or substantive cause it must be borne in mind
that juvenile delinquency, of the type now being considered, is a new
feature of modern life and a facet of juvenile delinquency which does
not appear to have engaged the attention of research workers.
The state of affairs which has come about was uncertain in origin,
insidious in growth, and has developed over a wide field. In searching
for the cause, and in suggesting the remedies which may be applied, the
Committee must not be thought to be laying the blame on any one
section of the community more than another.

VII. Some Visual and Auditory Influences
=(1) Objectionable Publications=
There has been a great wave of public indignation against some
paper-backed or "pulp" printed matter. Crime stories, tales of "intimate
exciting romance", and so-called "comics" have all been blamed for
exciting erotic feelings in children. The suggestiveness in the cover
pictures of glamour girls dressed in a thin veiling often attracts more
attention than the pages inside.
Immorality would probably not result from the distribution of these
publications, unless there were in the child, awaiting expression, an
unhealthy degree of sexual emotionalism. Some of these publications

are, possibly, more harmful to girls than to boys in that girls more
readily identify themselves with the chief characters. One striking piece
of information which was conveyed to the Committee was that the girls
under detention in a certain institution (the greater number of them had
had a good deal of sexual experience) decided that various publications
were more harmful than films because the images conveyed by the
printed matter were personal to them and more lasting.
The Committee has been deluged with periodicals, paper-backed books,
and "comics" considered by their respective senders to be so harmful to
children and adolescents that their sale should not be permitted. But,
while all the publications sent are objectionable in varying degrees,
they cannot be rejected under the law as it at present stands because
that law relates only to things which are indecent or obscene.
An Inter-departmental Committee set up in 1952 to report on worthless
and indecent literature similarly found that, while publications intended
for adults are controlled by the Indecent Publications Act (which in the
opinion of that Committee, was adequate providing the public initiated
action under it), comics and other publications outside the scope of that
Act might be objectionable for children.
When considering comics it is essential to appreciate the difference
between the traditional comic, intended exclusively for children, and
the more modern style which is basically designed for low-mentality
adults. Both styles and variations of them circulate widely in New
Zealand among children and adolescents. In general, however, younger
children buy, and even prefer, the genuine comic which is not harmful
and may even be helpful. Adolescents, and adults also, are attracted by
comic books that have been denounced by various authorities as
anti-educational, and even pernicious, in moral outlook.
The Inter-departmental Committee recommended that all comics be
registered and that it be made an offence to deal in unregistered comics.
There are strong doubts whether the adoption of those proposals would
provide a satisfactory solution. Once registration were obtained (which
would be almost automatic