Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee Part 3

(2) They are alive to the responsibilities that rest upon them as a Department of State charged with the task of operating a most important medium of public entertainment, information and instruction, and that

(3) They have, over the years, worked out for themselves a code of procedure under which a high and commendable standard of broadcasting has been, and is being, maintained, and that

(4) They are taking all reasonable and practicable steps to give effect to the suggestions put forward by the Mazengarb Committee, and that

(5) We express the hope that the utmost vigilance should be exercised over the choice, content, and timing of programmes--especially over those designed for the extended hours set apart for juvenile listeners--and that every effort be made to maintain the high standard that the Service has set for itself. We recommend, too, that during the hours set apart for children there should be a complete absence of features that can fairly be regarded as being unsuitable for or injurious to young people.

(_d_) Censoring Authorities

On this point we cite a paragraph from a memorandum placed before us by the Secretary for the Department of Internal Affairs. It reads as follows:

"A further recommendation contained in the report is to the following effect:

"'Any Departments concerned with censors.h.i.+p should maintain a liaison to produce as far as possible a uniform interpretation of public opinion and taste.'

"In the view of this Department the objective of the recommendation is good and should be followed up by appropriate action. There are several Departments concerned from different angles, and it would seem that the recommendation could best be implemented by whichever Department is charged with the general oversight of matters relating to moral delinquency. It would then be merely a matter of administrative action for that Department to call periodical meetings of the appropriate officers concerned with censors.h.i.+p."

We, as a Committee, agree with the view expressed above, and recommend it to the Government for consideration.

(_e_) Department of Education

(i) _Relative Functions of Public Health Nurses and Visiting Teachers._--The duties of visiting teachers were laid down quite specifically in an official circular in 1953. Senior officers of the two Departments discussed the relative functions of public health nurses and visiting teachers very fully soon after the publication of the report. The two Departments and Education Boards have drawn the attention of all visiting teachers and public health nurses to methods of avoiding overlapping and of working in co-operation. In a number of districts Child Care Committees, sponsored by Senior Inspectors of Schools, have inst.i.tuted central case registers. These have been a great help in ensuring that visiting teachers and public health nurses do not deal independently with the same child and family.

A residential course at Frederic Wallis House, Lower Hutt, has been planned for visiting teachers and public health nurses in 1956.

(ii) and (iii) _Additional Visiting Teachers and Type of Officer to Help in Post-Primary Schools_.--Approval has been given for four additional visiting teachers--two in Auckland, one in Wellington, and one in Christchurch. Discussions have been held with representative post-primary-school princ.i.p.als on the kind of help they need with problem children. Rather than have visiting teachers specially attached to the post-primary service, the great majority of princ.i.p.als were strongly in favour of extending the functions of the Education Boards'

visiting teachers to cover post-primary pupils, so that one individual could follow the members of a family through their full school career.

Approval has therefore been given for this. As a further a.s.sistance to both primary and post-primary schools, three additional school psychologists have been appointed.

(iv) _Housing for Teachers._--The Department has been trying to deal with this problem in two ways:

(_a_) By an extension of existing policy for the erection of teachers' houses. All Education Boards were consulted as to where the greatest need for additional houses lay, and, without exception, they gave highest priority to rural areas and small towns. The Government is giving consideration to an extension of policy based on this advice. In 1954, 61 houses were built for teachers; this year the number is expected to be 84.

(_b_) By the use of the "pool" housing scheme administered by an Inter-departmental Pool Housing Committee. Under this scheme, a proportion of all new State houses erected is set aside for letting to State employees and teachers on transfer. The Department of Education is represented on the Committee that makes the allocations and represents the needs and interests of the teachers and the schools. Most of the areas concerned are in housing settlements.

(v) _Facilities for Recreation._--The use of school grounds and buildings after school hours is entirely in the hands of boards and local committees. The Department has no direct authority in the matter, but does facilitate and encourage such use. Practice varies, but in many schools very great use is made of school facilities for community purposes. The work in this respect will be made more effective by the decision taken at the beginning of 1955 to build halls in all new post-primary and intermediate schools built to the new designs, to re-introduce the 2 for 1 subsidy up to 4,000 for halls in primary schools and to give a pound-for-pound subsidy up to 4,000 on gymnasia in post-primary schools. Approval has just been given, on an experimental basis, for a subsidy on a gymnasium and cafeteria in one intermediate school in Auckland, with the express condition that it be used "to provide recreational and cultural facilities for young people who have left school".

The Committee recommends these opinions for the consideration of the Government.

(_f_) Research Into Juvenile Delinquency

The Mazengarb Committee was of opinion that there should be a long-term study of the problem of delinquency. As a matter of fact the present Committee heard evidence on this suggestion from several witnesses, and we were greatly impressed by what we heard. It goes without saying that if one would seek a remedy for a given problem a thorough diagnosis of the problem itself is a fundamental prerequisite. First let us find the facts; let us know what is the nature and extent of the evil; let us get as much data as to its causes and incidence. With that material in hand we should be in a better position to search for useful methods of treatment. This task of fact finding would be a long and arduous one; it would need to be entrusted to experts of wide knowledge and experience. A start has already been made by the setting up of the Inter-Departmental Committee referred to earlier in this report. We strongly recommend the Government to give very favourable consideration to this particular proposal, and we hope that ways and means will be found of giving effect to it. We think that this suggestion is of fundamental importance in any approach to the problem, and we consider it should be given consideration by the Government.

_Instruction for Parents_: In the long run the responsibility for a child's general well-being rests upon the parents. Some can, and do, take every care to discharge that responsibility. Others either fail or neglect to do so. In some cases this failure comes from a lack of the necessary knowledge or from inability to impart it. In one memorandum addressed to the Committee there appear the following paragraphs:

"I think it highly probable that much delinquency is due to the fact that parents simply do not know how to teach their children on a subject that many parents regard as secret between parents. I think it highly unlikely that a parent will consult an adviser (say, a doctor) as to how the child should be trained, and I am not so sure that a doctor would know what advice to tender even if he was consulted.

"Instruction of parents seems to be the job of a specialist. The doctors have prepared several booklets on s.e.x instruction.

"I am wondering if good attendance could be secured for a series of lectures by specialists to parents, either to both s.e.xes or to mothers alone. A mother would probably be more likely to attend a meeting as one of an audience rather than to suffer the embarra.s.sment of a personal consultation with, say, a doctor to whom she has to admit that she does not know how to discharge her duty to her children.

"It is generally agreed that much of the cause of child delinquency is due to unsatisfactory home influence and parental control and example, but the fact that many of the offenders come from good homes and fine parents is strong evidence, I feel, that there is some important deficiency even in those good homes, and it may well be that that deficiency lies in the fact that the parents do not really know how to give their children the knowledge that they should have in the way they should receive it. I am confident that we have people who could help in this important work. Perhaps women lecturers would be best."

We are of opinion that the views expressed above do merit very serious consideration. We realize the tremendous difficulty we face in trying to reach those who stand most in need of the help that is here referred to. We recognize, however, that all our children must spend a big portion of their young lives in our primary and post-primary schools.

It is here that positive and well-planned character training and instruction in moral values can be undertaken with a certainty that the instruction and the training will reach those whom we would wish to help. Do we take full advantage of this opportunity? Do we give enough attention to those inner disciplines that are so essential if a good life is to be enjoyed by our young people? We are satisfied that our teachers as a whole n.o.bly discharge their obligations to our community in this regard. We think, however, that the matters touched upon in this paragraph are within the special province of the Department of Education and its Minister, and it is our recommendation that they should be referred to that Minister for examination and for such positive action as he may consider proper and desirable.

We think also that much more could be done in the homes if the ranks of our visiting teachers, public health nurses, and school psychologists were strengthened considerably, and we strongly recommend that action along these lines should be taken by the Departments of Education and Health.

We are also of opinion that in any effort to reach parents over the widest possible field a very useful agency lies ready to our hands in our Parent-Teacher and Home and School a.s.sociations, and it is our hope that this agency might be much more positively used to awaken and maintain a due sense of parental responsibility and a proper understanding of the moral and spiritual needs of children.

With such thoughts in mind, we would recommend that the Director of Education be asked to confer with the appropriate experts to see how far, and under what conditions, suitable courses of lectures could be provided for parents and prospective parents.

The Special Legislation of the 1954 Session

Following upon the presentation of the Mazengarb report the Government immediately took steps to give effect to those recommendations which called for special legislation. Three Bills were introduced, the first dealing with "indecent publications", the second dealing with child welfare, and the third with police offences.

In our order of reference we were directed to study these pieces of legislation and to report as to their efficacy and as to whether there were any specific amendments that were necessary or desirable.

In the preparation of this part of our report we have had the advice and much valued a.s.sistance of the Department of Justice. We deal here with the question of "publications". Our comments as to the Child Welfare Act appear elsewhere in this report. No comment is needed regarding the amendment to the Police Offences Act. First as to _publications of a more or less objectionable character circulating in New Zealand_.

We set out at some length some portions of the report submitted for our consideration by the Minister of Justice, the Hon. Mr Marshall.

_Inter alia_, it is said:

I. _Objectionable Publications in General_

"Our survey of the book trade disclosed that there were three types of publication to which particular attention should be given--comics, certain crime stories, and nudist and other suggestive magazines.

(_a_) _Comics_: "These are the publications which have attracted most public attention, both here and overseas, and in particular the type of comic known as the 'crime' or 'horror' comic has come in for a great deal of severe criticism. It is true that reading of a mildly bloodthirsty nature directed at the juvenile market is no new thing. The comic books of today, however, are not those of a generation ago, nor are they at all similar to the comic strips now appearing in the newspapers. Many of them are full of matter which is brutal, horrifying, and s.a.d.i.s.tic, and although to a certain extent they are published for and read by adults of feeble mentality they are also available to children.

"The origin of this type of comic is the United States, but other countries have not been slow to follow suit. Large numbers of comics are reprinted in England and Australia from American plates.

The interim report of the Kefauver Committee strongly indicts crime and horror comics and gives some revolting ill.u.s.trations of their contents. Reports indicate that comics almost as bad were circulating in England before the introduction of legislation there. The nature of crime comics circulating in Canada was responsible for an Act pa.s.sed there in 1949 prohibiting such comics.

"Even before the pa.s.sing of last year's Act none of the comics on sale in New Zealand was as bad as the worst American or English examples. At the same time some of them were most objectionable.

Since action has been taken here and in Australia the standard of comics distributed in New Zealand appears to have improved considerably. That is not to say that they are all free from objection, and there are a number of crime comics which we do not think should be allowed to go on circulating. Indeed, we think that this country can well do without the crime comic altogether.

Recently objection was taken to some forty comics, and we are waiting advice from the distributors as to their att.i.tude. Later in this report we shall refer to further proposals for dealing with comics.

(_b_) _Crime Stories_: "The second cla.s.s of publications referred to comprises publications usually known as 'thrillers'. These books are quite different from the ordinary detective novel and from the more traditional type of thriller. Many examples of this new type of gangster thriller have been flooding the New Zealand market in the form of paper-backs selling at 2s. 6d. or less. They are entirely devoid of literary or other merit and are devoted to the wanton depiction in gross detail of brutality, violence, and s.e.x.

"These publications and a number of so-called detective magazines which imitate them may perhaps be regarded as the adolescent equivalent of the crime comic, and we believe them to be equally harmful. Action against them will, we think, no more infringe the principle of freedom of speech than action against narcotics infringes the principle of free enterprise in the economic sphere.

"Action against these publications was taken some time ago, and some of the results of this action have appeared from recent reports in the press. As an ill.u.s.tration of what has been done we advised the a.s.sociated Booksellers that you considered all the novels of Mickey Spillane to be indecent and that you were prepared to prosecute in respect of them. The booksellers agreed with this opinion and recommended their members not to stock these books. We think it significant that these books, which were agreed to be objectionable, were being sold by many reputable booksellers in New Zealand. This shows how easy it is to offend unwittingly against the Act.

"There was a group of even more objectionable publications published in paper-back form by an English firm, Milestone Ltd. We advised the police some time ago that we intended to take proceedings against any one found selling these books. The Booksellers' a.s.sociation agreed with this view.