Criminal tattoo

Tattoos are commonly used among criminals to show gang membership^[1] and record the wearer's personal history—such as his or her skills, specialties, accomplishments and convictions. They are also used as a means of personal expression. Certain designs have developed recognized coded meanings.^[2] The code systems can be quite complex and because of the nature of what they encode, the tattoo designs are not widely recognized.

A Mara Salvatrucha gang member with a tattoo showing his gang membership

A member of the Mexican Mafia has the organization's name tattoed on his abdomen

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Further information: Prison tattooingTattooing in prison

Tattooing is forbidden in most prisons. It is therefore done in secret, with makeshift equipment. Some tattoos are made using melted rubber from the sole of a shoe, soot and/or ash, and urine for some sterilization.

[edit]Australia

Prisoners who were transported from Britain to Australian penal colonies between 1787 and 1867 were sometimes tattooed with marks intended to signify disgrace, for example D fordeserter. Prisoners often modified these tattoos to conceal the original design or to express wry or rebellious messages.^[3]

[edit]North America

Common tattoos are names of relatives or gang members, symbols of aggression, tattoos advertising a particular skill, or religious imagery. One of the most well-known tattoos is the teardrop tattoo.

Another common tattoo in American prisons and jails, especially for Hispanic inmates, is four dots or three dots. The dots represent that you have earned your keep in your gang. The three dots would represent the 13 of the southern gangs and the same for the northern gangs with four dots :: for 14.

[edit]Africa

Eye of Horus

[edit]Egyptian tattoos

• Ankh: Eternal life
• Anubis: Protection from death
• Eye of Horus: Protection from enemies/back-stabbers

[edit]France

In France, five dots tattoo resembling the dots on a dice, placed on the hand between index fingerand thumb are found on prison inmates. This tattoo represents the individual between the four walls of the prison cell (un homme entre quatre murs—a man between four walls).

Tattoos of three dots on the hand means "death to cops" (mort aux flics).

A single dot on the cheek usually means the wearer is a pimp (point des maquereaux).

A stick figure holding a trident is also a common French prison tattoo.

[edit]Russia and former Soviet republics

Main articles: Vory V Zakone and Russian mafia

[edit]Criminal tattoos

Russian criminal tattoos have a complex system of symbols which can give quite detailed information about the wearer. Not only do the symbols carry meaning but the area of the body on which they are placed may be meaningful too. The initiation tattoo of a new gang member is usually placed on the chest and may incorporate a rose. A rose on the chest is also used within the Russian Mafia. Wearing false or unearned tattoos is punishable in the criminal underworld, usually by removal of the tattoo, followed by beatings and sometimes rape. Tattoos can be removed (voluntarily, in the case of loss of rank, new affiliation, "life style" change, etc.) by bandagingmagnesium powder onto the surface of the skin, which dissolves the skin bearing the marks with painful caustic burns. This powder is gained by filing "light alloy" e.g. lawnmower casing, and is a jailhouse commodity.

Tattoos done in a Russian prison often have a distinct bluish color (due to being made with ink from a ballpoint pen) and usually appear somewhat blurred because of the lack of instruments to draw fine lines. The ink is often created from burning the heel of a shoe and mixing the soot with urine, and injected into the skin utilizing a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver.^[4]

In addition to voluntary tattooing, tattoos are used to stigmatize and punish individuals within the criminal society. They may be placed on an individual who fails to pay debts in card games, or otherwise breaks the criminal code, and often have very blatant sexual images, embarrassing the wearer. Tattoos on the forehead are sometimes forcibly applied, and designed both to humiliate the bearer and warn others about him or her. They frequently consist of slurs about the bearer's ethnicity, sexual orientation, or perceived collusion with the prison authorities. They can indicate that the bearer is a member of a political group considered offensive by other prisoners (e.g. Vlasovite), or has been convicted of a crime (such as child rape) which is disapproved of by other criminals. They can also advertise that the bearer is "downcast", or of the lowest social caste in the prison, usually used for sexual gratification of higher ranked inmates. Voluntary facial tattoos signify that the bearer does not expect to be released back into normal society within his lifetime, and will usually consist of tattoos on the eyelids of messages such as "Don't Wake Me Up." They are managed by inserting a metal spoon under the eyelid so the tattoo needle does not pierce the eye.

Tattoos that consist of political or anti-authoritarian statements are known as "grins". They are often tattooed on the stomach of a thief in law, as a means of acquiring status in the criminal community. A Russian criminologist, Yuri Dubyagin, has claimed that, during the Soviet era, there existed "secret orders" that an anti-government tattoo must be "destroyed surgically", and that this procedure was usually fatal.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Motifs

Barbed wire across the forehead signifies a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole(tattoos on the face usually signifies an expectation that the bearer will never leave prison). Barbed wire on the forearms or around the wrist signifies years served.Common body tattoos and their significance (NOTE: these tattoos are mostly characteristic of the Old regime, when the Vory V Zakonewas more structured in prisons):

• Birds over horizon: "I was born free and should be free." Bearer longs for life outside prison.
• Cat: a career as thief. A single cat means the bearer worked alone; several cats mean the bearer was part of a gang.
• Celtic Cross: Part of the racist white power movement. It has also been used to represent crosshairs of a gun, meaning that wearer is a hit man and he too will meet a violent end one day.^[5]
• Churches, mosques, fortresses, etc. are often tattooed on the chest, back, or hand. The number of spires or towers can represent the years a prisoner has been incarcerated, or number of times he has been imprisoned. A cross at the top of the spire indicates that the sentence was paid in full. The phrase, "The Church is the House of God," often inscribed beneath a cathedral, has themetaphorical meaning, "Prison is the Home of the Thief."
• Dots on knuckles: number of years served in prison.
• Madonna and baby Jesus indicates that the bearer is 'clean before his friends' in that he will never betray them to authorities.
• Dagger: sex offender
• Dagger in neck: Signifies that the bearer is available for hire to kill other prisoners.
• Executioner: Murderer, or that they follow the The Thieves' Code^[5]
• Goat: Informer, an animal without honour.
• Lenin, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels: Usually tattooed across the chest or over vital organs. Mostly characteristic of the Old regime; prisoners would tattoo them because the firing squad could not shoot the images of USSR's founding fathers.
• Rose (white-dried): Death is preferable to loss of virtue.^[6]
• Rose with thorns: Bearer came of age in prison.
• Spider or spider web: may symbolize racism or doing time in prison^[7]
• Spider Web: If the spider is in the centre, the bearer is dedicated to a life of crime; if it is climbing out of the web, the bearer is trying to reform himself. A few other versions are that the wearer is a drug addict, like an insect trapped in a spider's web he is trapped in some kind of a narcotic web, or that it signifies time in prison as each ring of the spider web represents one year in prison.
• Tombstones represent the loss of time. You may see the number of years that are served (i.e. five tombstones reading 2001–2005 means the prisoner has done five years).
• SS: two sig runes were the symbol of the Schutzstaffel, Nazi insignia.
• Stars: Worn on the knees: signifies that the owner will kneel before no man, or no one.
• Stars: Worn on the shoulders: Signifies that the owner is a man of discipline, status, and tradition. Men will also receive stars when promoted to "Captain" in the Vory V Zakone.
• Skulls: Signifies murder, if the murder was significant enough to merit the tattoo. Military insignia and uniform epaulets are worn on the shoulders. This symbolizes criminal accomplishments. When a skull symbol is portrayed with it, it usually designates a man as a murderer. Epaulets are decorated with certain crests and symbols in the sections where one can see the skull there prior to conviction, especially when it was of any significance.
• Swastika: This is seen on Neo-Nazis as it is the symbol of the Nazi party.
• ACAB: This is seen on convicts across their knuckles, it started and is most popular in the UK and stands for "All Coppers Are Bastards". A less obvious synonymous version of this tattoo is a small dot across each knuckle (each dot representing each letter). This tattoo when used as the dots version is also widely known as "prison dots".
• LOVE and HATE: This is often seen on criminals and thugs across their knuckles. It is said to have started from the film in the 1960s The Night of the Hunter in which the serial killer bears this tattoo.
• Borstal mark (or Borstal spot): Is an Indian ink dot, usually located between the thumb and forefinger of the hand or under the eye. Borstals were UK youth detention centers, and the mark was traditionally obtained during an offender's first period of imprisonment. The borstal mark has been considered a status symbol among some criminals. The "Borstal Glove" consists of a tattooed outline on the back of the hand. A dot on the cheek bone is a diluted version of the borstal "tear", a sign of completing a sentence at Borstal. This is now used as exactly the same meaning but for people who have been and served in a youth detention center or aYoung Offender Institution as Borstals were abolished in 1982.
• Cross: A small cross either on the forehead, finger or between the thumb and forefinger is sometimes seen on convicts as a symbol of serving time in prison.

There is another category of tattoos—of rings on the fingers—which informs other inmates of the bearer's rank when the bearer is clothed.