author
New Zealand. Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents
Produced in 1954 and widely known as the Mazengarb Report, this New Zealand government committee became a defining voice in debates about youth behaviour, sexuality, and censorship. Its findings reflected the anxieties of its time and went on to shape public discussion far beyond the inquiry itself.
1 Audiobook
Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents
by New Zealand. Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents
About the author
The Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents was a New Zealand government inquiry set up in 1954 after public concern over teenage sexuality and several high-profile youth crime cases. It was chaired by lawyer Oswald Mazengarb, and its report was formally titled Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents.
The committee’s report quickly became famous as the Mazengarb Report. Distributed very widely across New Zealand, it argued that weakening parental supervision and modern social influences were contributing to what it described as moral decline among young people. The report also called for stronger action around censorship, sex education, and public standards.
Today, the committee is remembered less as a literary author than as the source of one of New Zealand’s most influential and controversial social documents. Historians often read the report as a revealing snapshot of mid-20th-century fears about adolescence, gender, and social change.