Using the book ‘The lost boyz: A dark side of graffiti’ Justin Rollins explores how it feels to be a re-offender and his journey to turning his life around and getting back on track. As later chapters are approached and become deeper into the book, it gradually gets more abstract and moves onto matters such as nature of society, nature of reality and also human nature, which links to the two theories that will be discussed during this essay; positivism and classicism. This book is a very useful resource that is available to all individuals, especially troubled youths because it involves useful lessons and experiences from Justin Rollins life that could potentially help people involved in crime turn their life around and possible find some sort of rehabilitation. The purpose of this essay is to critically discuss Justin Rollins explanations for his offending behaviour from a young age and apply two theories that are relevant to his behaviour and could constitute to this. Throughout the book, Justin Rollins constantly talks about racism, violence and mental health, which could be strong factors to as why Justin Rollins chose or was forced into a lifestyle of crime.
From a very young age, Justin Rollins grew up without a male role model in the house hold, which may have caused him to over-compensate because he may have felt like he had to be the man of the house in order to look like his mum and sister. Having no male role model to look up to also meant he wasn’t taught how to act like man and felt as if he had no one to stick up for him or another man to talk to when he was getting bullied at school. This could be one strong factor to as why he joined a gang because he stated during an interview that “being in a gang made me feel stronger because I knew people had my back and when I was at school alone I felt weak”.
The words “chose or was forced” was used to describe Justin Rollins behaviour because there is quite a lot controversy within the criminologists theorist’s world about whether committing crime is a voluntary or involuntary response. The two theory’s that would be used to describe this response to crime would be positivism and classicism. The basic idea of positivism was first founded by Cesare Lombroso in 1835, and he believed that a criminal was born and not made, which would therefore be an example of nature and not nurture. This theory focuses mainly on the psychological and biological factors to explain the criminal behaviour of an individual. This theorist believed that all criminals had an abnormal chromosome, which would therefore effect there features and cause them to have large jaws, strong canine teeth and a few other features. This abnormal chromosome theory is known is the XYY because in the 1960’s they believed violent males had an extra Y chromosome (normal chromosome pattern in males is XY). However, a criticism with this theory was that the research they carried out wasn’t reliable because they only tested on a small group of males, and later found out that the theory was not entirely true because some criminals had normal chromosomes and some non-criminals had the extra chromosome.
The other theory is classicism, which is the belief that committing a crime is free will and someone’s decision on whether to commit crime or not is determined by environmental factors such as family life and the area in which he/she grew up in. theoritst
Throughout this book, it became evident that Justin Rollins lacked love and attention from his mum when he said “I felt no real connection with my mum” (Rollins, 2011:29) and was also mentioned during an interview when he said “My mum never told me or my sister that she loved us and still to this day we never hug or show any affection to each other”. He also believes that this feeling of rejection and abandonment could have been a trigger for mental health issues that arose later on in life. This feeling of abandonment could also have drove Justin Rollins into crime and gang activity, because he stated during an interview when questioned that being in a gang gave him a sense of belonging and was like having another family, which obviously filled the void and made him forget about the lack of belonging his mum made him feel from a very young age. This links to the criminologist theory of classicism because environmental factors such as feeling neglected, drove him to join a gang because he craved the feeling of belonging. However, at certain parts in the book it appears Justin Rollins is not sure who he can blame for his bad decisions and mental health issues that developed because he states in the book “My mother never helped me. I do not blame her one bit, she was working hard to give me and Jemma a better life” (Rollins, 2017:19).
Justin Rollins briefly talks about his dad during the book, which suggests his dad was never around much and therefore he didn’t have much to say about him apart from “My father didn’t try very hard to stay in contact. I hate it when a man says he’s done all he can to see his kids. The man never did” (Rollins, 2011:16). The fact that he refers to his father as “man” several times throughout the sentence suggests that Justin feels his father doesn’t deserve the title father and this is known to be a common trend noticed by criminologists. An example of where theorists have noticed this trend in people who have suffered from mental and physical neglect or have experienced abandonment by one or two parents is in a study in 1944 called 44 Juvenile Thieves (Flanagan et al, 2016:336), which was carried out by john Bowlby. The aim of this study was to determine whether there is a link between adolescent delinquency and maternal deprivation in infancy. The only criticism with this theory/study however is that it does not consider the factors that caused the separations and also doesn’t consider the area in which the child grew up. Bowlby’s conclusion was that maternal separation/deprivation during a child’s early years has a large effect on the child’s mental health and can therefore cause emotional damage, which may be the reason for Justin Rollins bad decisions during life, because his dad left at a very young age and he felt emotionally neglected by his mum, which was the last parent he could rely on.