subcommittee the amendment, which I don't have here, but which could have some important bearing on your legislation.

Mr. BENNETT. When I introduced my legislation, I had not thought about the difference in scienter, that knowledge, that knowing aspect. When it was brought to my attention, I said, "I certainly didn't seek to put any less burden upon these people that are making a billion bucks a year by perverting our young people."

So I sought an amendment and was handed an amendment this morning which merely took the section out of Congressman Celler's bill and put it in my bill. But what does that section say? That section says that a defense to the bill, a defense to the crime in the law will be "X."

Well, of course, it looks to me if you add a defense to a bill, you haven't subtracted anything from the defense that was there. It doesn't tighten the bill a bit.

So just before I came over here, I drafted one up that seems to me to solve the situation. I said:

"A person shall be deemed to have knowingly dealt with a minor in this legislation if such person has made no substantial effort to determine whether or not such minor is in fact a minor."

This will have all the teeth for the bill that the chairman suggested. Mr. ST. ONGE. You used a little facetiously the year 2000 as the date when this legislation would be on the books.

Would you have any objection to a constitutional amendment that turned this entire problem over to the States, in view of the number of complaints that have been received by the Congress, in view of the number of complaints that have been received by the Post Office Department about this type of mail being sent to the home, and in view of your position that perhaps there are different geographical standards in the country?

It seems to me that 30 years would be a long time to wait for a solution, and that if the States were to be given the power under a constitutional amendment to handle this problem, the result that you have worked so hard to accomplish would be accomplished a lot more quickly.

Mr. BENNETT. You are a very stimulating man, and I appreciate this comment. You are stimulating because you bring to my attention that we have a dynamic Supreme Court. It is going in directions that I don't always approve, but it has no difficulty in using the constitutional provisions to launch the Government of this country into experimental or new challenges and channels. I have suggested that maybe we legislators might not be the old fuddy-duddies we have been at times, and perhaps we could look at the Constitution, too.

It clearly is constitutional to do what I have suggested. It isn't in the pattern of 1898. One reason why the Supreme Court has not been any more heavily denounced than it has been denounced is because it has sometimes met problems which we in the legislature have not met which we should have.

The legislative branch did go to grips, for instance, with the question of one man, one vote, and the fact that most State constitutions and laws required redistricting and things of that type; but they never got around to doing it. So the Supreme Court with one little opinion made the States come around to doing it.

I don't see much constitutional basis for what the Court did but something needed to be done. Here we have a clear constitutional right to do this as a matter of legislation, and yet we apparently have a reluctance. We would apparently rather amend the Constitution than do what we already can under this marvelous document. I think we ought to use this document. If you don't use things they die. The legislatureCongress ought to use the Constitution. Here is the place we could use it. If the objective is good, why not do it? Why not show the people we are dynamic ourselves about the Constitution. Why wait to have a constitutional amendment? That takes time.

I would like to see the fuddy-duddy attitude we have toward Congress reversed a little bit, and not always be on the side of saying, "It is not in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court shouldn't have done it," but try to make some reforms ourselves sometimes.

I would favor the constitutional amendment you mention, but I think my proposed legislation is better.

Always, in order to be a happy man, I have to greatly underestimate chances of success. I am hoping and praying every night that you will pass a bill like mine, because I like to be astounded by the happiness that comes in life from unexpected breakthrough; and it would make me very happy if you did do it.

I always have a pessimistic element in my own psychology in order to be happily surprised. I would be happy if this dynamic committee would come forward with this dynamic idea to make this live and breathe in 1969 and accomplish this objective.

Mr. ST. ONGE. One further question. My memory is a little lacking in the Leopold and Loeb case. Was there pornography used in that case?

Mr. BENNETT. I didn't use it as an illustration of pornography. I used it as an illustration of sexual irregularity giving rise to murder. I think it could be documented by every law enforcement officer in this country that many crimes are done because of trying to cover up sexual irregularity. Lately there has been a great deal of information that pornography has been a hard-core technique of creating perversion, even among preadolescents, and some publications are even published for this purpose. If you want to call Mr. Booth, he can give you information of this, the assistant district attorney in my area.

Material has been designed to bring children to perversion. The material is so designed by a process of making things acceptable of a worse and worse nature, to where finally they get the child in a position where he doesn't know right from wrong.

Mr. ST. ONGE. I have no further questions.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. I have a comment for the record.

The impression was left that the age limit of your bill and the New York statute in the Ginsberg case were similar. Actually, section 484 (h) of the New York Code speaks of a person under the age of 17. Page 3 of your bill, lines 4 and 5, uses "under the age of 18." I would like to get your thinking on that.

Mr. BENNETT. I want to make a strong request that you make it identical with the statute in the Ginsberg case. I don't want to have any change, for a little thing like this might keep this bill from being held constitutional.

If it came to the floor, I would offer an amendment to make it exactly like the Ginsberg case. My bill drafters were instructed by me in writing to make it identical with the Ginsberg statute and the difference is an accidental error.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. The gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. MIKVA. I know statements are made by law enforcement officers, but are you aware of any statistical studies, and I think the committee would find it very useful, that tie up pornography with crime? Mr. BENNETT. There is one study being made now.

Mr. MIKVA. They have specifically said they at this point have no evidence of a tie. That would be important, because we all operate

Mr. BENNETT. There is a difference between saying you have no evidence and having statistics. I would say if that commission has no evidence of connection between pornography and crime, they ought to be fired now, because every prosecuting officer in this country can give you that evidence.

So there are hard facts. Now when you say "statistics" you must realize that crimes are not all identical. Each is a little different. Every person is a little different, and so you have to have some criteria of what you mean by a "connection."

If you mean the incidence of pornographic literature in the hands of people who commit horrendous crimes, if that is what you mean, there are certainly statistics on that or they can be obtained because police officers know of many of such cases.

Now, can you look into a man's soul and determine why he committed a crime? Psychologists and psychiatrists have a tendency to feel that most everything is normal for the particular individual who does it, and they might say, as 80 percent of those in a particular poll did say, that they couldn't, in their own practice, find cases where they could clearly say that there was a connection between pornography and antisocial sexual behavior. Others in the poll said they did find such connection in the cases they had treated.

Of course, I guess most psychologists today make their money out of treating people that are unhappy, and not just out of people who are in the dregs of society, because not many people can afford the wages of a psychiatrist and psychologist. Poor people can't get to them. They don't have the opportunity to go to psychologists. So for these doctors to say their patients didn't commit crimes is not very astonishing. They didn't say that pornography couldn't stimulate crime.

I would say that as far as I know, there are no hard statistics on pornography causing any kind of crime, but there is certainly plenty of evidence to that effect, evidence not yet reduced to statistics, substantial evidence, very great evidence. If this committee wants it, I am sure it could get it by calling almost any prosecuting official who prosecuted over any period of time in this field. I think he would give you good, hard evidence and through research good solid statistics could be worked up from existing evidence on a national scale.

Mr. MIKVA. Is the existence of pornography for crime

Mr. BENNETT. I just gave you one case. In this case Mr. Booth showed me the literature which was designed by the person who published the literature, apparently, to help a pervert to pervert preadolescents, children.

Now, this man had to do with youth work in Mississippi, and then he moved to Jacksonville and became interested in youth work there. He used this literature, and a very substantial number of young children under the age of adolescence were shown these pictures by this man in a series of activities over a period of time, and he had his picture taken with these children doing the same sort of things that were in the pornography.

That, I think, is certainly not anything we want to perpetuate in society. Some may say that is not a crime but it is in fact. Also he has created scores of unhappy lives. And of course such perversion is outlawed by a criminal law. If one wanted to change the law and say that it isn't a crime to be a pervert and it isn't a crime to make children into perverts, then I guess that conclusion would limit the evidence of connection between pornography and crime. But there is also evidence, if not statistics, on pornography having a connection with such crimes as rape and murder and other crimes of violence.

The evidence is there. Statistics I do not have. Statistics could be worked up from the evidence. But you would have to set up some kind of a standard as to how much the pornography had to do with the crime. Obviously, the degree would differ in each actual case.

Mr. MIKVA. I don't want to prolong the battle, but for years we have passed laws, State legislatures and Congress, based on an official reaction, that there was a tie between pornography and crime. Pornography can be offensive for many, many reasons that maybe have nothing to do with crime. That is why I complimented Mr. McCulloch before. If we are talking about a person's right to privacy, not to be offended by unwanted material which he deems salacious, we are talking about one kind of statute.

If, on the other hand, we are talking about a law that is going to diminish crime, then I assume we are talking about a different kind of statute, and maybe it is important for us to find out once and for all is there something beside this visceral feeling that there is a tie between pornography and crime? Is that the direction we want to take, or the direction Mr. McCulloch wanted to take, that we protect our citizens' right to privacy?

Mr. BENNETT. I don't think there is any quarrel between us. Mr. Celler said my bill didn't go far enough. He said my bill wasn't a strong enough bill. I have suggested an amendment to make it stronger. My bill is not a muckracking proposition at all. And regardless of what your objectives are in a philosophical viewpoint, the statute I recommend is just what I have suggested.

But I can't say I don't believe something when I do believe it, and I must say that we have at times passed laws in this country which were based upon a very small number of actual events.

We have, for instance, the Lindbergh law. It was passed for Mr. Lindbergh's child. The child was already dead, but we passed the law because of this crime.

How many people are guilty of treason under the U.S. treason laws? It is very difficult to try people for treason. You have to have two witnesses for every overt act, and there has to be an overt act, not just a discussion or something like that.

So the fact that a law doesn't have a tremendous statistical background does not mean we shouldn't eliminate it if it is of sufficient importance to society. But, after all, this philosophical discussion, the bill which I have introduced has only been criticized here today because some think it is not strong enough. And I have urged an amendment which will make it equally strong.

It is a very reasonable bill. It is a bill which has been adopted by the Supreme Court as reasonable. It is a good law. It has lots of specific words in it that are very unpleasant to read. But I put it all in there because the Supreme Court had, prior to this Ginsberg statute, been turning down the legality of statutes because they were not specific enough. This statute, as offensive as it is to read, is specific, and it meets the test, and therefore it is a good law.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. The gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. CONYERS. I want to apologize for being late, because I was doing some work on the Supreme Court myself. I am getting ready to testify against Judge Haynsworth's nomination this afternoon.

So I appreciated your comments about the Supreme Court, but I was a little disturbed that you are going to prevent them from reviewing this legislation.

Mr. BENNETT. Not at all. You haven't read the bill, if that is your view, because this is not true.

The only thing

Mr. CONYERS. You are not prohibiting the Supreme Court or any other court

Mr. BENNETT. The factual determination of "harmful to minor" is not reviewed in a specific case. The legality of this statute and the legality of any legal matter involved, constitutionality, et cetera, is all appealable, every bit of it.

This has only to do with the determination in a specific case that this material was harmful to a minor.

I am glad you brought that out, because the press might have misunderstood.