People » Dr Carleton Simon
Dr Carleton Simon
- Name:
- Dr Carleton Simon
- Role:
- Psychiatrist, Criminologist and Advisor
- Born:
- 1871
- Died:
- 1951
About
Well-known psychiatrist and criminologist, who acted as an advisor to the MPPDA on the representation of crime in moviton pictures between 1928 and 1938. In 1901, he conducted a study of Leon Czolgosz, the man who assassinated President William McKinley. From 1920 to 1926 he was Special Deputy Police Commissioner in charge of the New York City Narcotics Bureau, where he was responsible for a significant increase in the number of drug-related arrests in the city and became a minor celebrity as a result of his personal participation in drug and Prohibition raids. A socialite and celebrity, Subsequently, Carleton sought to apply psychiatric knowledge to understand the workings of the criminal brain, developing an early, and subsequently discredited, theory of neurocriminology. He also made a contribution to early forensic science by devising new methods to identify criminals, and advocated universal, compulsory fingerprinting He was the first person to propose, in 1935, the use of retinal scans for identification. A socialite, champion angler and surfer, and celebrity, Simon publicly opposed the death penalty, and rehabilitation of criminals.
Image caption: Dr. Carleton Simon demonstrating the method of photographing veins in the eyes as a means of the identification of criminals. Image: Popular Science, 1939.
Linked Records
- The industry has found a friend in Dr Carleton Simon, a psychiatrist for the New York Police Department and a writer and...
- It has been proposed that crime motion pictures be banned in Louisville. In a detailed letter, Milliken brings Wolz's a...
- Cecil B. DeMille Roadshow production, The Godless Girl anti-atheistic, primarily an expose of conditions in Juvenil...
- On newsreels of Dillinger death: they "bring with them a fuller realization that in spite of partly successful attempts ...
- enclosing memo by McKenzie 30 September 1930: re War Nurse, MGM Trotti: "This is another striking evidence of the worki...
- Crime and the Motion Picture. Dr. Simon suggests that movies teach people "lessons of proper human behaviour," but also...