Recent Book: The Box and Crime: Television and Delinquency
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7004301002 |
| Date | 01 October 1970 |
| Author | Philo |
| Published date | 01 October 1970 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
would do well to
pay-literally-more
than lip-service to its key
office.
THE BOX AND CRIME
J. D.
HALLORAN,
R. L.
BROWN
and D. C.
CHANEY:
Television and Delinquency.
(Television Research Committee, Working Paper
No.3).
Leicester University
Press, 1970. 30s.
In every age, it seems, people seek
explanations for the extent of juvenile
delinquency in the influences on young
people
of
the popular entertainment
of the day. In the 19th century writers
about crime would bemoan the effect
of the penny theatre with its tales of
Jack Sheppard; in the inter-war years
the cinema with its gangsters was the
target for criticism; today it is tele-
vision and the large part
that
crime
and violence play in its offerings
that
is under examination.
It
is typical
of
our
age
that
we are no longer content
to bandy arguments and anecdotes
back and forth on this topic: now we
demand hard fact. Indeed, in 1963 the
Home Secretary appointed a Tele-
vision Research Committee, with the
task of initiating and co-ordinating
research into the influence of tele-
vision and the other media on young
people. The subject, aided by this
official interest and official funds, has
established itself at
our
universities as
atopic of research, and the full aca-
demic apparatus
of
survey and
statistical analysis is brought into play.
This book is the fruit of one such
piece
of
research, conducted by the
authors as members
of
the staff of the
Television Research Committee. The
first
part
of
the book is a rather diffuse
examination of previous literature on
the topic of television and delinquent
behaviour. Surveys of other people's
work are seldom exciting, but this one
seems rather more difficult to read
than
most, perhaps because of the
difficulties of co-ordination when three
people are at work. Nonetheless, it is a
valuable source of reference for those
who need to know what people have
written on the topic.
The main body of the book, how-
ever, consists
of
an analysis in detail
256
of the authors' own research. They
drew three samples, one of pro-
bationers aged under 20 from an area
in the midlands, another of young
people
of
similar age from the same
group of the
population-i.e.
mainly
the lower social
classes-and
a third
sample from the lower middle classes.
Though there are some technical
difficulties
about
comparison between
the three samples, the authors felt able
to make detailed analyses of the
differences between the three groups,
distinguishing the boys and the girls.
When the analysis was
of
the amount
of television watched by those in the
samples, no differences emerged.
Where the probationers did differ
significantly from both controls, how-
ever, was in the various questions in
the survey which dealt with the way in
which they
talked
about the television
that
they had watched or would like to
watch. Fewer
of
the probationers
talked
about
television programmes to
their family; fewer of them could give
the interviewers a clear idea
of
why
they watched what they did or what
they would like to see. More
of
them,
too, looked for excitement in television
rather than some other quality. Thus,
there were differences between the
probationers and the others in respect
of television, but it seems more likely
that the differences, like the delin-
quency, were the product
of
their
personality and social position than
that television was the cause
of
their
delinquency. At best, it would seem
that
if the role
of
television is, in the
old phrase
"to
put ideas into young-
sters' heads", some youngsters are
more exposed
than
others to the risk.
The authors have given us a little more
information about the processes in-
volved.
PHILO
October 1970
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