Prison Tattoos | Full Documentary

Drizzy on the surface is banishment and penance but behind the scenes hidden from the eyes of prison guards a place of ingenuity in partisan art form they represented the cultures they represented your belief in American prisons a secret an illegal subculture obsession is bright tattooing is very very big part of prison culture now with the first time many lives lived and bleep prison tattooing the secrets that surround methods of making the tattoo machine just a basic motor out of a CD player whatever we can get our hands on and how to make thinking you cut that paper album yeah piles of black slate if person hasn't earned that he has on he's probably get going [Music] that's very unique and tell your people in Korea [Music] and decode the hidden meaning using tattoos the chair thoughts that I have are most commonly known as you know for either murder [Music] to be pigs [Music] Oh of the over two million prisoners behind bars in America at least 50% okay I like my tattoos from either life experiences or what I've been through head to toe Prison tattoos can cover literally every inch of skin I got transferred to a different prison so one person did this Canadian person to that long considered the mark of the outsider in the outlaw tattoos on special significance to prison inmates my body new and has a story that can go for days but actually getting inked behind bars means breaking the law it's not allowed to tattoo in prison because of the risk of infection tattooing and US prisons is easy this forbidden status means no professional inks and equipment are allowed giving rise to a unique style of single needle tattooing known as black and gray [Music] black-and-gray tattoo emerged simply based on the limits of the technology they did not have the access to multiple needles they didn't have access to real tattoo needles in your average tattoo shop the artists are using sophisticated coil or rotary machines precision coil devices can cost up to $700 each and our intricately crafted the tattoo machine basically is made up of Springs coals Compass's copper pieces front strains rubber bands basically what it does is you hook it to a power supply so when electricity pushes it down the magnetic part pushes it back up depending on what you're doing you use different needle groupings based for this for a rundown of a tattoo machine but the components of a tattoo machine are considered contraband how do it makes manage to create such amazing works of art on their skin inmates behind bars to make almost anything as they put their minds to it it's fascinating what they can come up with the ingenuity begins with the construction of a makeshift tattoo machine using whatever inmates can get their hands so with pretty much every prison tattoo machine I've ever seen or I've ever made consists of a regular pen and on the inside there's a pen pillar which you take out convicted of assault 27 year old david chance is an accomplished prison style tattooist he's revealing his techniques on camera [Music] what we're doing is making a needle mutter with this and this is the barrel this is where your needles going in is coming up this in guitar string is used as a needle which will puncture the skin and deliver the ink you use what you have been in there I mean we're limited we're allowed CD players or allows beautiful instruments so those are two things that you need right there to make a prison tattoo machine driving the tattoo machine is a small motor and this is just a basic motor out of the CD player out of a tape player a boom box whatever we can get our hands on there's motors and anything the guitar string is sharpened on sandpaper and tested to see if it Pierce's the tough layer of skin [Music] David then makes a camp a rotating disk from the pens in tune this will be the connection between the motor and the meeting so I'm gonna heat up a little piece of guitar string and I'm gonna poke a needle in there which is what this is gonna rest in and when it rotates the needles going with it that then bearing the holder is then attached to the motor and the sharpened needle slotted into the bear hower to drive the tattoo machine comes courtesy of an adapted plug for battery [Music] cliff it's right in your hand super small little tattoo machine you can do not hold back peace with this because prison tattoo guns only have one meal opposed to multiple nice and professional machines to do a whole back piece could take weeks but before the let's get started he has another test that will test his ingenuity making the ink Meghan the ink was interesting she was definitely dirty thirty-three-year-old total grace started tattooing behind bars during his first prison term at just 18 he becomes a master making his own people but the process creates hazardous fumes luckily they sold fans in prison so I would get to I get I got empty tuna can I fill it up with baby oil poke a hole through the center of the lid and then I get like a brand-new mop strand and I'd stuff it in and I like an old fashioned wick throw some baby llama I might it and it would smoke like crazy black soot and we just take our lunch bags you don't get a brown bag every day for lunch - just put it fold it nice and neat right over it and it burn for six hours and when you're done man you cut that paper open you got piles like so and then we just mix that up with a chap state cap of vo5 and like five cap some water and get some ink I'm not healthy it is for you but I got it all over me and I am mi petroleum-based product to use because they catch fire easily and burn for a sustained period the reason Shampoo is at it is as a binding agent for this suit but there's more than one way to make ink and every artist has his special form my favorite was chess pieces grab the chess pieces you burn them up and the stuff that would go up in the air you catch them on a piece of paper you just scrape it off and then add water to it or some people run newspaper you know because some people said there was more carbon in the paper so the ink would be black because the homemade ink is made from petroleum it only comes in black which is why all these entities are black or gray with the whole meeting that's all you have is black and then shades of black [Music] with the prison made tattoo machine and homemade cake the inmate he's ready to start engine sentiments difficult element elitism in process [Music] if you don't have that craft and you can't lay that ink right you can't get those blends it's gonna be a rough road you know when david chance decided he wanted to be a prison tattooist he didn't dare start on a human skin I was engraving cups oh I was just doing cups at the time passing time in time his cups got noticed by his cellmate you time talked me into it he's like dude he was like I've seen the cups of you dude I've seen the engravings I've seen all that stuff you need to do it I got bored one day and sure enough I wound up tattooing on other guy I was just obsessed ever since ending in prison for six years for arson Ryan Lewis taught himself to tattoo by using his cone skin as a campus yeah actually touching my chest one of my buddy did one side of my chest and I ended up doing the rest of it it was just really likely dying for a few hours and I did it I think over the course of a week and it was really intricate through a lot of line work and like from the first line I was just like what am i doing to myself learning the craft takes years of experience something Josh Hagen had none of when his cell mate talked him into trying to tattoo the time had even thought about tattooing I just drew a lot he's like hey Johnny bro for the couple days I was like nah no I'm not really into that you know then he finally talked me into it tattooed him and it took him like three months to heal up my seek out the guy and just ruin issue according to convicted armed robber Derek Sanders it mates who decide to get tattoos should first check the artist as a master of his equipment and his craft some people are good some people are bad some people just beginning you know just testing the waters but basically what I did before I got my tattoos I watched other people you know watch them perform there are no other people and I made that try the Citizen of who I was he'll shoot through my tattoo but even when he nailed the equipment and the crown there are other pitfalls waiting in the world of Prison tattoos the little-known world of prison tattooing is a subculture all of its own some designs are art for art's sake but others are symbols that can hold life-or-death significance getting inked without understanding the hidden language of prison tattoos is a definite health risk so if an individual wants a tattoo they'd better be real sure that they're not gonna offend somebody Richard Lipton is a thirty year law enforcement veteran who works at America's most violent prisons he says prison gangs enforce many of the rules behind bars including those surrounding tattoos they're white power gangs a nuclear black Games and you're Hispanic gangs and Asians gangs are very very prevalent very very dangerous if you're in a game you get the gangs tattoo then you have elevated yourself within that prison system it's a mark of respecting that you now carry their tattoo in some prisons it's estimated that 60% of tattoos are gang related they markleham we're as protected but also a target I got my tattoos in prison they got XIV x4 from northern Asia the northerners are a Hispanic gang from Northern California they're gangsters for 15 signifying the 14th letter of the alphabet n the norteños sworn enemy are their Surenos or southerners prison gang who wear the tattoo sir Spanish for South if there's a lot of southerners around though hit me up and stuff like that I try to kill me for that gang tattoos can be as simple as a series of numbers Michael Torres 916 tattoo is the area code where he grew up in Northern California but can also show affiliation to the norteños prison gang people from opposite gang you know gang members in general know what it is see what it is and they can move on that you know as well as showing gang tattoos can also broadcast crimes carried out in the gangs name one of the most common examples is the tear drop the tear drops that I have are most commonly known as you know for either murders or attempted murders a tear drop can mean different things depending on which prison you're in on the left it can be matters for attendance matters to me [Music] you could stand for loved one and out live teardrop can symbolizing in May to kill for again the dropping the children once the moon sing sell people attach them where they may have an excellent maybe they have tombstone and those basically stands for people they've killed some prison gangs tattoos of next [Music] can stand for the kiss of death meaning to wear three dots can stand on the feet on the path for my [Music] well that's indicates a history of incarceration and the fit is they make himself on a spider web tattoo each strand can stand for a year of a prisoner's sentence other tattoos that can indicate prison time hour o'clock with no hands to signify a long stretch and the comedy tragedy mask smile now cry later laugh now cry later tattoos what emoji just represents you can't really do anything about situations so laugh about an eye you can cry about it later for white gang members racist symbols like swastikas or SS bolts can also be a sign that the wearer has committed a hit the displays where you're at what you've done basically your hierarchy while you're locked up now when you earn tattoos it's mostly you know violence 33 year old Carl grace knows that from experience he earned tattoos by being an enforcer for a white gang put in some work there's some dude from like my area I don't I wasn't up to par with lip you know the white boy standards and so I smashed him on the yard went to the hall for three months when he got out of the hole Carl continued burning tattoos and I when somebody who came to the art and they need a geek out with I was like this I'll do it I'll get him you know I have a huge Crucified skinhead on my side that I earned for like talents and business on the art I was pretty proud of at the time Paul says the majority these tattoos are earned not through gang-on-gang but inter-gang violence this guy's messed up he's gotta be dealt with and somebody's gotta do is it's mostly like in-house clean up all the time that's how you're on tattoos I mean that's how you're supposed to not everyone knows the secret code of tattoo meanings and for them to break it there were penalties the person hasn't earned the tattoos he has on him he's probably and yet don't Lee you know one time an individual thought he would get himself a white-power tattoo hope he was not a member of that gang well they came to him with a knife and they said you either cut it off your arm right now or we're gonna cut it off and the inmates weren't cutting it off for him according to david chance the punishment can also be dealt to whoever created the unearned tattoo they falls back on the artist well who did that oh where did he do that when did you deserve that attached you know I refused it to you like all the the racial like swastikas and bolts and stuff like that cuz you gotta earn that stuff and then get me in trouble if I'm just passing it out while gang affiliation guides the truths of some tattoos behind bars an equally strong influence is race every nationality leans more towards a heritage like the white folks you got them more towards the Aryan more medieval as where the Mexicans you got the Aztecs of stuff and you got the blacks they do the black rights movements and stuff like that white prisoners like Carl grace baby dating the cob images have a lot of demons people in prison aren't happy nobody wants angels nobody wants butterflies like people want diamond sales goals you want death not especially the white boy is that this will grind to order like okay they're crazy Ryan Lewis has Native American heritage which is reflected in his prison ink [Music] kind of my path you know it's a band from our tribe it's like a it's a basket design and an oak leaf which is pretty central I got black elk it was kind of like a native prophet that was telling you know the people the Lakota to go back to their their old ways to relearn their old ways to teach their children in these ways the inmate tattoos can also be personal like an autobiography entered into skin the demon here that's chained to the wall kind of stands for being locked or chained down to your addiction you know then the drugs math was always my weakness prison ain't can tell us struggles in the past or dreams for the future my dad was a iron horseman and in his younger days and he'd always written Harley's so I wanted to buy myself a Harley and I figure well if I get a tattoo - I mean that out then I'll have to get one when I get out sometimes your dad chew toys is gonna refer to the life that you got behind sometimes it's gonna refer to the life that you're gonna want to get to on the outside sometimes it's just refers to the prison life that you're leading right here but what drives anything to get heavily tattooed on their face America's prisons are home to a secret tattooing culture that flourishes despite being in the and some inmates take prison ink to the extreme governed their whole body even their face the face is the most public part of the human body the face is the way that we present ourselves for the world so prisoner with the face tattoo is saying fu convicted Utah murderer Kurtis Algiers Prison tattoos are saying a lot more than that algier killed a corrections officer and his mug shot has been called the face of hate because of its neo-nazi and white supremacist symbolism as well as swastikas and iron crosses he has more coated indicators of his extremism such as the 88 which because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet a stands for Heil Hitler on his cheeks he has the belt not a newer symbol of three interlocking triangles that shows a willingness to die for a cause [Music] Latin American gang members are also known to commonly wear facial tattoos to increase their intimidating appearance this inmate displays the Roman numerals xv3 coded symbol of the 18th Street gang it's like more pain in prison you know that's why people get all that crazy on their face and neck you know they just they want to look nutty you know they want to look crazy but sometimes a facial tattoo can also have more personal residence a Centro kicked a heroin habit behind bars something he's reminded of every time he looks in the mirror and sees his gin tattoo the fish represent you know serenity or calmness you know and the dots kind of represent my mind and my body and my soul you know just kind of had to get control of all that before I you know paroled was my goal whether a name a disease for his extreme believes his gang for his own story he's taking big risk by getting tattooed behind bars the tattoo kit tattoo gun is contraband like anything else and it's against the jail rule the guards will seize a contraband and then defend us sometime in what's called discipline he nature calls the hole I went to the hole like four or five times my mentality was kind of like I'm gonna do what I want and if you don't like it don't care Carl Grace's cellmate judge Hagan his top back swing twice by prison guards he slapped with an extra 60 days on his seven years more than that the confiscation of his tattoo machine yeah the thing is that you get this nice little setup that you spent a whole bunch of time trying to put together and they take it away and then now you got to like go out to yard and try and hustle up new parts to put this thing back together and now as a pain in the ass yourself your whole situation gets tore up you lose all your equipment he can a lot to keep tattooing behind bars he mates have to find somewhere to hide their kids we had two electrical outlets they were you know bolted into the wall and my cellie had access to the tool that we could loosen these bolts up and his box at this perfect compartment where you can hide tattoo machines to weapons whatever you want it's hidden the same way you'd hide a prison weapon or narcotics within mattresses within cracks in the wall inside of a toilet because there's a thousand places to hide it I had a magnet on the back of mine so I just throw it up under the bunk and it's and it's hid didn't kick back like I'm watching TV the majority of prison tattoos are done in the cells which means while laying inmates need to a point process is that you have like a point man that would keep eyes for you to make sure that they don't walk up in on you but with harsh penalties for being caught tattooing what makes being a prison tattoo artist worth the risk the first answer to that question is status via tattoo artist prison definitely gives you a lot more merit a lot of people want to be your friend getting tattooed by the guy that did the best work in there it was an honor not only does being a tattoo artist boost your social standing in the joint it allows you to become a major player in the clandestine prison if I missus like this yeah so everybody's got the little job right - that's Monday you want fat - you go see my drawing and come see me that's how I was distinguished if it was a straight-up business transaction whatever they can get from store food and cosmetics somebody needs to get to a to you yeah I just told me you know Chara coffee six bucks right there and tattoo him for 20 minutes that's good if you can smoke you can get two back that you get tobacco a few and few adult pad you can get dope but if an inmate wants to enjoy the spoils and status of being a prison tattoo artist and stay alive he has to learn to respect the secret codes of conduct codes that are specific to each prison in jails or prisons there are written rules that you get no escaping no fighting no swearing and that sort of thing but there are many many unwritten rules as well there are just as important to your safety and welfare in ASA crows prison the unwritten rules made it forbidden to tattoo across certain racial and gang lines definitely couldn't tattoo the blacks every death sentence couldn't tattoo the norteños it's also a death sentence did tons of any gang you can think of from Southern California from Bakersfield down I did every gang so I'm gonna add all these people on my cell you know murders kidnappers direct drug dealers you name it I tattooed them all [Music] which is where the train trip the standards and for the purity of artistic expression but some artists will rise above the rest in the top deadly underbelly of America's prisons a little-known and illegal subculture is threat black and gray tension my tattoos were made with makeshift guns motorists would be taken out of radios and cassette players but sometimes the prison tattooist can't get the equipment he needs to build a makeshift tattoo machine time to go back to basics is a long form of tattooing involving a sharp point to pierce the skin once all tattoos behind bars were done this way today it's a method more often used in county jails where contraband materials are harder to obtain sometimes you couldn't get a machine you couldn't get none you grabbed a little piece of metal sewing needle whatever you could just hand poked you just push that ink in you can't achieve any sort of depth or anything like that with the stick and poke but I mean you can pound ink and you the skin with a nail if you wanted to prison tattoo artist Mark Martin used paper clips or staples needles you get them and pay for it that you law your bra you can see them on the floor that may be a guard drop food is the method in some of the finest prison tattoo artists started their career with sticking folk [Music] considered the Godfather prison-style breading the grill of doing pretty big tattoos just half poking and on all my homeboys you know I said you know we got a chance at least if I am poking on them weddings right some gangbanger kids are faint prison-style tattooist begins in la santa maria district in the 1960s when he joins his neighborhood gang the sound guy I guess I grew up kind of confused troubled you got a lot of trouble getting into trouble changes Freddie's life forever in juvenile court he meets a Mexican kid covered in tattoos I was like you know what he's tattooed you know what does this mean and I was just obsessed with this guy I remember he told me yeah you get a needle and thread you know you dip it in ink all you can even use it a girl's mascara you know so I got out and I got my older sister's mascara and that night I was in my I pitched her little tent and my bed with a flashlight and I hadn't poked this little thing on my hand as Freddy grows up his gang crimes get more serious he finds himself in juvenile prison and begins forging his own tattoo style rejecting the color tattoos popular in tattoo shops [Music] first of all we thought that color tattoos were cartoony you know shop tattoos and the big blinds and they were simple designed he thought that it was more real if you had thinner lines and less of a line showing and are the tones of gray you know because of what we were trying to accomplish was like a black-and-white photograph so shading and fine lines was a big thing for us and that's what black and gray is all about [Music] behind bars Freddie realizes the limitations of prison style machines straight lines are impossible because the needle [Music] I came up with just a matchbook paper to go over and then tape it around the side of the machine and held the needle steady and so our line work was coming out much better and straighter and then for shading I would take it off because it was okay to have the needle wobbling around because we just made circular motions you know ready also experiments with ink production to give him a range of black and gray tones another thing that we did was to get the ink and evaporate the water out and it would make a blacker you know denser ink and also to add a little bit of baby oil or our water to the ink to make it lighter like a lighter gray so we were coming up with different tones of grey the results of Freddy's innovations are classic Hispanic images like the Charter Girl and the Virgin of Guadalupe then in 1976 Freddy develops a tattoo that will become a Chicano classic smile now Riley I saw a little ad for acting workshop and you know there was the comedy tragedy faces right there well my favorite song at the time was smile now cry later was the old anybody song and when I saw those I thought immediately thought of smile now cry later behind bars Freddie builds a reputation as a master prison tattoo [Applause] his rise to become the Godfather of prison style will be tainted by tragedy [Music] former Chicano gangbanger Freddy Negrete is a pioneer of black and gray tattooing [Music] the secret of his success learning to tattoo behind bars you know the prisons is like the meeting ground of the minds you knowin and a lot of culture and style came from prison caught up in Chicano gang [ __ ] Freddie first starts tattooing in Youth Authority prison in the 70s using handmade tattoo machines and self produced ink he devises a phone line black and gray law that defines prison style to this day but what he never expected was that prison style tattooing could give him a lucrative career on the outside and when I finally got released and I started tattooing you know out of my apartment I found a huge market you know right there and done I charged that $15 or a big tattoo so I had a huge clientele in the 70s and 80s tattooing comes of age giving mainstream acceptance Freddie begins working at East LA tattoo shop good time Charlie's I knew all the mean guys from all the games all across town and I was respected by them and so as soon as I started at good time Charlie's you know it was on [Music] the late-1990s tattooing is a booming industry becoming a bowtie with thousands of shops nationwide [Music] many of the new customers who want a bring the cachet of an artist who learn to tattoo behind bars you know I'm from prison I'm from a street gang you know and to see it become this global phenomenon this as a famous tattoo artist Freddie rides the crest of belief but a personal tragedy that brings and crashing down my son Lorenzo you know passed away he was actually shot you know he was murdered and I was devastating for me distraught Freddie slides into drug addiction and by 2004 he's back behind bars you know I enjoyed this I love tattooing I made a livelihood out of it for all these years you know but now I was back in prison you know using this little homemade machine and tattooing for soup locked up despair sets in until the day Freddie decides to change his life in honor of his son who passed away if you could see me how would he want to see me a loser and drugs dying in prison you know or would he want to see me a success you know Freddie beats the drugs and is released in 2006 a memorializes the son he lost with a tattoo of his nickname frosty I said I've really learned to you know to deal with his debt to live with it remember him love him now working in Mark Mahoney shamrock tattoo parlor in LA Freddie's clientele includes Hollywood actors and rock stars and he's passed the skill of tattooing on to his other son Isaac first touch to my bed big porch me and I got a smile on her later on my trip say when he hasn't been right I said I'm still me just this little guy but people when I meet them from other countries and stuff and they're like oh you know one of the fathers of black and gray and stuff and I like and I just you know old gangster that's it you know just doing my thing that I learned in prison Freddie has bathed away now other prison tattooists are learning that all those years spent tattooing behind bars can pay off this kind of influence a lot of people include myself in the tattoo industry when prison tattoo is david chance was released he found him ready market for his expertise in central california i got into a shop within six months of being out and now I'm in one of the best shops on the Central Coast and it's great meanwhile Phoenix former prison tattoo artist Sam H has also found his skills in demand despite becoming a respected black and gray tattooist he still uses a gun that resembles the money you had in prison and prison use a machine that's basically a rotary tattoo machine and the machines that most tattoo artists use now is a coil machine but I still use a rotary tattoo machine which is basically a glorified prison machine and I can do things with this machine that I can do with the prison machine except 100 times better I just feel it it's my roots I started off with a homemade machine bobbin motor guitar string you know dipped mint and some pelican and still what I use today but while Prison tattoos are a springboard for success for some in other cases they're just the opposite Prison tattoos forged in adversity these marks of identity can have a dark side especially when applied against an inmates will in 2006 a convicted child murderer in an Indiana prison was inked by food the words katie's revenge were tattooed into his forehead by another inmate Katie was the name of his ten year old victim prisons and jails very very dangerous places with some very very dangerous individuals that reside in them but there are other perils in this world of Prison tattoos less obvious but no less dangerous there's nobody sterilized while you're in prison so therefore you got a high risk of hepatitis a staph infection even outside prison tattooing carries a risk of blood-borne diseases and infection but among inmates rates of infection of HIV are four times higher than the general population and hepatitis C up to 10 times higher and nothing transmits blood-borne disease better than a tattoo needle but some a mate say you can minimize the risk when I tattoo every time I tattooed somebody new I would make a new setup for them because you know I wasn't that guy that's like oh let me pour bleach telling us to Van Dyke clean it up and like using on somebody else like cuz that's pretty gross you know cuz I don't care what people think but bleach doesn't kill everything you know so like every single person I tattoo I'd have to make a new setup for them incarcerated for 11 years art Powell received many tattoos but always provided the needles in ink himself I kept my needles I watched him clean the guns I kept my own ink I can't follow my stuff because you know I knew it was a possibility that could happen so I took those measures not to me [ __ ] but even if you avoid contamination there are other downsides that getting prison ink and they start outside the prison gates the streets of West Atlanta 25 years ago they were the scene of a bloody gang turf we'll call me tricky because I was called for shooting people the story of art Powell's life of crime is his skin I got involved in the streets at the age of 13 I started gangbanging at the age of 15 back in 1984 by the late 80s art Powell is a high-ranking member of one of the most notorious gangs at Atlanta history I refused his posse control the southwest side of Atlanta try to take over the city was involved in a lot of crimes among the cases I was involved in or high-publicity cases by the early nineties hearts joined another gang called do or die mafia and winds up in prison we basically was robbing businesses and we robbed the business and it went bad and one of my core defects was shot and that's pretty much that incident is what sent me to prison for 11 and a half years like many inmates Martin gets his first tank behind bars and can't stop I got my first tattoo and it was like an addiction well look at what the dude got might be a 2008 with my crew I was waiting when I got incarcerated so I got that tattoo you know as a symbol to say okay you know this is why we and this has put me in a position to be incarcerated now release arts on a mission to stop other kids following his path I help for one of the most notorious gangs in another history called out a few possible and a lot of people died a lot of people's incarcerated one of his messages tattoos can be a first step to a life of crime and incarceration how many I thought I can tattoo yeah I'm just uh I can't get attention okay dogie once they see my tattoos and ask questions I look at that as a door or an opportunity to communicate with them it don't get them it's a brand you have to wear it gives people an opportunity to stereotype you it gives people an opportunity to deny art believes the stigma of having a tattoo can limit your opportunities making crime a more attractive town and prison a more likely destination and studies show a link between tattoos and cry after prison 2x prisoners with tattoos are over 40 percent more likely to violently reinfect than those without taxes well according to the study yes the person with the tattoos who left prison is more likely to reoffend both because his tattoo is make him less employable and less acceptable in mainstream society but I would also say that once he started putting those tattoos on in prison he was already saying society doesn't want me and so I'm gonna go ahead every effect met wilcher was recently released from prison after serving time for assault and probation violations all but one of his tattoos he got in prison got Bo sleaze chest oh you know my back my left for I did it myself now Matt needs a job but some employers don't want to hire ex-cons especially those with visible tattoos I can wear a long sleeve shirt and they won't seen in these news man capiche but matt has a very visible tattoo on his left hand so he's going to get it removed he comes to see Mark Martin mark is a former prison tattooist who now has his own tattoo shop in Georgia he removes ex-inmates tattoos for free that's hard enough when somebody gets out of prison people are trying to take him seriously but then when you come on your cover with tattoos I mean it's even harder it's hard to get a job it is pretty much hard to do anything the process involves breaking the tattooed area of skin with a conventional tattoo machine it's a bloody process after you tear up over the area where you can actually start to see the ink you put the information on top that stuff's gonna burn this is ink erasers and that's gonna be bringing the particles into the surface into the scab for a complete removal of his tattoo Matt will require anything between eight and twelve sessions but if you're a former member of a prison gang there's even more reason to get your tattoos gang tattoos not only prevents your getting work they could get you killed and my touches of gangs my evil way drugs it'll attack Xmas in your gang member Henry is getting his tattoos removed with a laser hippie and stuff like that I try to kill me for just debate I put on my body laser treatment is faster than tattoo that remain but it still hurts [Music] well for some Prison tattoos a resource of regrets to others the secrets and risks of this hidden subculture are part of the attraction that to me would give me the opportunity to get my mind away from the prison and I was fortunate enough to have something that was released before the morning to make the equipment they're becoming fluent in the subcultures Hidden Cove prisons a 2-lane doesn't give up its secrets PC but too many it's an art form that flourishes even in the most hostile of environments and a subculture that performed the ultimate escape act by scaling the prison walls us little gang members you know even though people hated us so bad for the bad things we did we gave the world beautiful tattoos and beautiful art [Music]

Channel: Documentary Central

Views: 5,385,374

Rating: 4.4772511 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, Channel, Watch, Online, Videos, Full, Free, Stream, Documentaries, TV, Series, Movie, Doco, Season, Episode, YouTube, Length, Movies, Torrent, Netflix, Australia, United, Kingdom, States, New, Zealand, prison, tattos, tats, gangs, jail, criminal

Id: v4TPhD1xh0M

Length: 48min 6sec (2886 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Nckjrvs]

This picture is of Curtis Allgier, an inmate from the Utah State Prison, who While on an off site doctors office, overpowered his officer and stole his gun, and eventually shot and killed him. (R.I.P. Stephen Anderson)

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/11/24/white-power-skinhead-who-killed-utah-corrections-officer-in-2007-loses-bid-to-withdraw-his-guilty-plea/

Allgier is a piece of shit

[u/chicagodurga]

I bet no one calls him “four eyes.”

[u/xX-OwO-Xx]

Well... that’s a lot of swasticas...