Editors' Dilemma

Few lawbreakers, from the drunken driver to the crooked official, ever succeed in bullying or bribing U.S. newsmen to keep their names out of the paper. Yet editors go out of their way to shield one type of criminal: the juvenile delinquent. By long tradition, or in many states by law, the great majority of U.S. newspapers never name juvenile delinquents, i.e., offenders under the ages of 16, 17 or 18, depending on local law and custom, unless they commit major crimes such as rape or murder.

As juvenile crime rates skyrocketed, editors have had to decide whether they were avoiding their responsibility to tell all the news, and whether the policy of secrecy has been one of the causes of the increase in juvenile crime.

Pressure to name names has mounted with the statistics: juvenile crime leaped by 70% from 1948 to 1955, while the U.S. juvenile population grew only 16%. Some areas show even more frightening figures. Latest New York City statistics show that 41.2% of arrests for all major crime involve offenders under 21. In Detroit police estimate that 70% to 80% of all car thefts are committed by juveniles.

"People Should Know." In New York editors and publishers are demanding a change in the state's new Youth Court Act, now scheduled to take effect in 1957, which would empower judges to impose secrecy on criminal cases involving youths. In Tennessee newspapers are also fighting a law that shields the identity of juvenile offenders. In Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts and Florida, editors often defy the law to give their readers the full story of a particularly serious juvenile crime.

What the editors seek is not the right to run the names of all youthful violators, but freedom to use their judgment on what names to print. Many of them also feel that names should be used more often to put pressure on the offenders and their parents. Says the Miami Herald's Associate Editor John D. Pennekamp: "Juvenile criminals are as bad as adult criminals--or worse. Maybe if they see it in the papers, the juveniles will believe it themselves." The strict Florida law preventing courts and police from divulging juvenile names recently led a young hoodlum to jeer at Miami Daily News Reporter Damon Runyon Jr.: "You can't write about us; we know what the law says."

Naming Parents. One of the strongest advocates of a tougher policy is Publisher Richard H. Amberg of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Until last December, his paper (circ. 300,375) was as careful as the Post-Dispatch (402,439) not to identify delinquents. Then three 16-year-old boys raped a 14-year-old girl. Amberg not only ran their names but wrote an editorial saying: "We feel that if somebody is old enough to rape a girl, he is old enough to get his name in the paper."

Like Editor Amberg, some news executives now even run names of parents of juvenile criminals, plus their occupations and marital status, to illustrate their belief that teen-age crime is not necessarily a product of broken homes or economic distress but reflects a widespread breakdown of moral values in the U.S.

Delinquents with Scrapbooks. On the other hand, many authorities--and some editors--agree that publicity makes the job of rehabilitation harder, that it may actually be an incentive to crime. Says Captain Robert Summers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office: "It glorifies them in the eyes of gangs. Using their names does nothing but give them status." Some delinquents even display scrapbooks with clippings about their misdeeds.

While recognizing the complexity of the dilemma, many responsible editors look at the rising juvenile crime rate and wonder whether the traditional policy of secrecy is still valid. They agree with Brooklyn's Adult Court Judge Samuel Leibowitz, once Manhattan's most famed criminal lawyer, who says: "Whatever happens in the courts is public property, and the public should know what the judge's actions have been. We can trust the good judgment of the press."

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