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Show REPORTS OF CRIMES DO NOT DEVELOP CRIMINALITY, ACCORDING TO INVESTIGATIONS OF CHICAGO MAN The oft repeated charge that the reports of crimes In newspapers lend to develop criminality, or anti-social anti-social conduct, as the experts prc-for prc-for to say nowadays, lit met and disposed of effectively by Dr. Wll-llSm Wll-llSm Hoaly, lltector of the Psycho-pathlc Psycho-pathlc Institute of (he Juvenile MB Court of Chicago. In his book. Just EM Dtibllshed, "The Individual Delin quent. " he says plainly that In no one tdnglc case has he been able to trace criminality to the reading of newspapers. The common assumptions on the subject have only a surface plausibility. plausi-bility. Qr)mej after all, Is only a small element in the news. The dally paper, so far front arousing attention to It. as a rule, swamps it with a diversity of Interests which tend to minimize Its iniluencc Whenever crime is displayed, the glajmor Is all taken away. The criminal crim-inal Invariably gets the worst of It In the newspaper story lie Is a hunted wretch or a miserable prisoner, pris-oner, lie Is shown h.iRgarri and hoprles Anyway, the majority of criminal l careers are begun he fore the newspaper news-paper reading age - reached. Actual Ac-tual inquiry shows that y.oUng offenders of-fenders hardly ever notice anything any-thing In newspapers except comic pictures. They show nt Interest in newspaper rcpo ta of crime, and no trace of hero worship or romantic sentiment a8 attached to criminality criminal-ity found lo jirlse from news- 1 hoieii y "" prilJer articles. In ;i word, the budding bud-ding criminal Is not infatuated by anything in the paper), and to tnose of older growth the newspaper treatment of the topic must be sob-crinc. sob-crinc. and admonitory. The only direct !;id effects of newspaper reading are found in occasional unbalanced un-balanced minds, and in such cases the result is more likely to be false self-a. cusatiOn of some crime thot Is attracting publi, attention than any attempt to imitate It. Far different is ihe influence of the cheap crime story on the your-er your-er generation. Its pernicious influence. influ-ence. Dr. TIealy says, can be proved by numerous cases. Along Avlth morbid pictures of all sorts, bad literature lit-erature is a fertile source of crlm- inai Inspiration, The difference In J effect from the newspaper repuil -j i due to the different treatmei In the "penny dreadful-' the c rime", the thins; in the newspaper the purJ suit of it In the bad story the I criminal la the defiant and audcess-ful audcess-ful horo; In the newspaper he generally gen-erally is the downcast victim of his i own wickedness. |
