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Page 2 ORGANIZED CRIME DIGEST July 22,1987
Spelrs, who has be.en serving as acting admin~.
Jfrator o f OJJDP, made the dect~on last November
not to publish Retsman's final report. She then
took her cause to various anti-pornography groups.
and, at the request of the groups. Sen. Armstrong,
using a traditional Senate courtesy, placed a
'hold" on confirmation of Speirs" nomination.
Backing Reisman in her effor~ to get the .,
Justice Department to publish the final report is
the National Federation for Decency of Tupelo,
M/~s.
At the confirmation hea~ng of Spelrs on
May 20, he did not encounter much opposition.
and Sen. Joe Blden (D-Del.), chairman of the
Judiciary Committee, said he bacl~ Spetrs as
permanent admInistrator because Speirs had
provided written assurances "that he will support
OJJDP and will be "'an aggressive advocate
within the Reagan AdmInistration on ]uvenile
justice Issues. '"
Printed below is an article by Reisman regarding
the controversy. OJJDP officials were
Invited to prepare a response, but declined the
offer.
e O 0 0 0 0
WHY DOES OJJDP REFUSE TO
PUBLISH THE REISMAN REPORT?.
By Judith A. ReiJmmL Ph.D.
President, The Inatitute for Media Edncs~lon
Citizen groups and prominent academicians
and feminists have been demanding that Vernon L
Spei~, acting, administ~ta¢ •or the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP), release the real,"fulty authorized, Reisman
Report to the public. That concern prompted
Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.tL) of the Senate
Judiciary Committee in May to request explanations
from Speirs regarding the OJJDP disserrfination
of my t'mal report, "A Content Analysis of
Children, Crime and Violence in the Pictorial
Imagery of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler." Since
May, Sen. William Armstrong (R-Colo.) has requested
a courtesy hold on the conf'u'mation proceedinga
in order to further investigate the matter.
Sen. Humphrey asked the nominee, imong
other things, why - on November 14, within 24
hou~ of its Nov. 13, 1986, receipt - OJJDP had
couriered all six bound copies of my 360-page
Volume I to my hostile host institution, The
American University. Speirs was asked why my
authorized report and findings were suppressed by
OJJDP, unobtainable for public critique thxough
Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
And, he was asked to answer my charge that no
• one at OJJDP ever even read the report, which the
OJJDP director of research demanded be delivered
on November 13.
Speira was asked to explain his claim that the
Reisman Report did not accomplish "the major
objectives of the study," since past OJJDP Administrator
Alfred Regnery testified to his knowledge:
"The product which you ultimately delivered..,
was what we had asked you to
do. The fact that it was apparently rejected
by OJJDP did not, therefore, bear
on the question of whether you performed
under the grant, but was a political decision
on the part of the acting administrator."
And past Deputy Administrator James
Wootton, concurring with Regnery, added:
"Dr. Reisman's research accompl/shed what
it set out to do. She analyzed the content
of Penthouse, Playboy and Hustler and
found that a pattern of depicting children '
as viable sex objects existed. There are
obviously those that do not like the implications
of those results and will do everything
that they can to discredit those associated
with this project."
As most readem of Juvenile lus¢lce Digest
know too well, my research - which dared to also
examine Playboy, documented as the most populaxly
relied on U.S.A. sex education source for
American men (and allegedly, boys)'- has been
in the crossfire since its inception in December
1983. The study received exten~ve attention from
the media and in Senate hearings (April 1 I, 1984;
Aug. 1, 1984; May 7, 1985; and May 20. 1987).
At the Onset, my investigation into the popular,
sexually explicit entertainment media attracted
an intense interest among a broad spectrum of
political figures, academicians and broadcast and
print journalists. However, as Rutgers University
Professor Seymore Gilbert cautioned: "Those
attacks certainly raised questions as to the motives
of those endeavoring to abort an organized scholaxly
research project."