Criminal tattoo

Criminal tattoos are a type of tattoos associated with criminals to show gang membership and record the wearer's personal history—such as their skills, specialties, accomplishments, incarceration, world view and/or means of personal expression. Tattoos have been empirically associated with deviance, personality disorders, and criminality. Certain tattoo designs have developed recognized coded meanings. The code systems can be quite complex, and because of the nature of what they encode, the designs of criminal tattoos are not widely recognized as such to outsiders. 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 for deserter. Prisoners often modified these tattoos to conceal the original design or to express wry or rebellious messages. A common prison tattoo in Australia is 'A.C.A.C.' - the initials to a derogatory phrase regarding cops. In France, five dots tattoo resembling the dots on a dice, placed on the hand between index finger and 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); this also has the same meaning in Russia and Spain. Tattoos of three dots on the hand mean "death to cops" (mort aux vaches / flics / poulets / keufs). 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. "La Stidda," a Mafia-style criminal organization in Sicily, is known for using star tattoos to identify members. During the Edo period of Japan, kyōkaku, urban "chivalrous commoners" or "street knights" typically wore irezumi, prominent full-body tattoos. Kyōkaku operated as cultural outlaw figures and were frequently used as characters in Japanese kabuki performances. Current yakuza have full-body tattoos, typically inked in secret by tattoo artists associated with clans.