A Modest Contribution: tattoos and tatistics Nic Groombridge, St Marys University College, Strawberry Hill nicholas.groombridge@smuc.ac.

uk Abstract: This article explores the historical and ongoing interest in tattoos in the criminological and deviance literature. It is critical of the attempts to distinguish normal from deviant tattoos. It uses both criminological and a wider literature to argue for the ongoing intertwined sociological significance of tattoos and criminology. Lombroso was understandably wrong about tattoos; more modern writers the practitioners of tatistics - have no excuse. We should be more modest, less discriminatory. Keywords: tattoos, Lombroso, Lacassagne, criminological history A young woman carves "I AM A SADISTIC PIG AND RAPIST" into the torso of her legal guardian, Nils Bjurman. She too sports, by choice, a large tattoo - a dragon. For all their decorative vivacity and multiplicity tattoos take on the meanings the observer gives to them. As we shall see some of those meanings are liberal and tolerant but many are condescending and condemnatory or, indeed, condescendingly tolerant. Tattoos exist that do have meanings for individuals, sub-cultures or societies and these may change over time. And yet many disciplines including criminology - insist on fixed meanings. Particularly we will see distinctions made between State-imposed tattoos and prisoner chosen ones; professional and amateur; prison or criminal ones and anti-social or not. A host of taxonomies abound. Throughout this article occasional reference is made to male and female differences or matters of ethnicity and sexuality but the literature provides insufficient material to mount a full analysis other than of the presumed white (unless specifically noted) and often working class male. Fisher summarises some of the issues that mark this paper: ... tattooing appears in varied forms, from the scholarly journals of anthropology, history and sociology to newspaper stand magazines that can be construed as soft pornography. What this spectrum of literary forms has in common is a relative marginalization in which American tattooing is perceived as part of a deviant subculture and not a topic of serious intellectual interest. Academics involved in this research have referred to colleagues attitudes about research on tattooing as a deviant interest in deviance. In addition, many academics have an agenda of legitimating the practice of tattooing by explicating its social and cultural patterns. (2002: 91) I own to a deviant interest in deviance and have met collegial bemusement; but intend to explicate some social and cultural patterns here without seeking to either legitimate or criminalise. Further context is hinted at by the vignette that opens this paper. Given its many weeks at the top of the fiction bestsellers lists around the world, many will recognise the crime described as being committed by Liesbett Salander as punishment for Bjurmans direct sexual violence towards her and his conniving at the States indirect violence against her in Stieg Larsons Millennium Trilogy

(2008: 246). She is better known as, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 1. Her rough tattooing/ branding of a criminal, contrasts with her own choice of body marking - larger and professionally applied. The States tattoo on her is etched in the files of psychiatrists and prosecutors. These contradictions - tattoo as punishment, tattoo as adornment - mark much of the criminological and other discourses. As we shall see they do cause particular problems to the criminological in seeking to identify just those tattoos that might have some criminological or penological relevance. For instance, the Encyclopedia of Russian Prison Tattoos Volume 3 (Baldaev et al: 2008), is an interesting amalgam of history, criminology, semiotics and anthropology packaged in a retro fashion hinting that the contents were a bit under the counter. This sketchy introduction to some of the issues is now followed by some shading in the shape of a discussion of early criminological engagements with tattoos. Criminology then appeared to lose interest in tattoos so some of the other disciplinary engagements with tattoos before returning to the continued criminological interest. The conclusion suggests greater interest, including empirical and qualitative research, should be paid to tattoos within criminology but not by neo-Lombrosian positivism or correctionalism and, finally, to recognise the sociological marks on the skin of early positivism. Caplan summarises early criminologys engagement with tattoos thus: The tattoo thus became a kind of semiotic battleground on which criminologists skirmished with the tattooed over the significance of their marks, though they seemed uncertain whether the trophy was the meaning of specific images or of the sign as such. (2006: 359) As we shall see there has been some skirmishing within criminology too. Moreover, the fascination with tattoos continues but regrettably so do attempts to link them determinately to criminality, deviance and mental health. Lomboso v Lacassagne - publicity criminology The Russian prison tattoo encyclopedia offer collections of tattoos for the discerning connoisseur. Early criminologists had their collections too. Some of those survive today, for instance the Science Museum lists these human remains (excerpt): A524 France 1850-1920 Human skin tattooed with male and female figures, head of clown and bird, and inscribed " Robinet", French, 1850 to 1920; A525 France 1830-1900 Human skin from chest and abdomen, tattooed with two female heads and lion and lioness, French, 1830-1890; A526 France 1830-1900 Human skin from whole chest of man, tattooed with various motifs, French, 1830- 1900 and A527 France 1850-1920 Human skin tattooed with star and head, French, 1850 to 1920.2 Most criminologists will know of Lombrosos interest in tattoos, and for some that will have marked the end of their interest. What they may not know is that Lombrosos first criminological
1 2

In translation the less commercial, more feminist original Swedish title is Men who Hate Women.

Thanks to Gemma Angel PhD Candidate University College London for this. She is examining such materials and is a tattooist herself. See http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us/collections/human_remains.aspx accessed 13 June 2012

inklings came in 1863, from his observations on the numbers and styles of tattoos of those soldiers prone to vice and those not. That is criminology itself may be said to have derive from the observation of tattoos. His more famous epiphany, during the autopsy of the brigand Villela, came later but made sense of his earlier observation (Caplan: 2006). Not only might the skin be read but the underlying weak flesh could be observed too. Lombroso had a collection of photographs, pictures and skin samples of tattoos; and Chapter 3 of the first edition (1876) of his Criminal Man is given over to tattoos. Lacassagne also had an interest in, and extensive collections of, tattoos. The two men drew different conclusions from them.3 Lacassagne had an interest in tattoos as a means of identification of victims post-mortem or as part of his colleague Bertillons biometrics; but both he and Lombroso associated tattoos with criminality. Early in his career, working as a doctor, Lacassagne surveyed the thousands of tattoos of several hundreds of soldiers in a disciplinary corp and presented an analysis to an international meeting of anthropologists that was said by Science to be most entertaining and instructive (in Starr, 2011, 41, see also Valier, C. (1998)).4 Starr catalogues the huge amount of material both men took to the first International Congress of Criminal Anthropology; not public criminology but publicity criminology. 5 Both took preserved tattoos though Lacassagnes had mostly been transferred onto fabric. As Starr (2011:127) says of Lombroso, They were all designed to illustrate that the criminal was a physical type. Whereas Lacassagnes were, not to show a biological tendency, but to illustrate the criminals culture. However, some of the differences between the men/systems are chimeric and may stem more from national or professional pride. Following Caplan (2000), Bradley (2000) notes ideas in Britain developed about born criminality and imbecility without reference to tattoos. In Britains Millbank Penitentiary Mayhew merely noted the warders claim that the tattooed dots on the hand was the sign of a regular thief (Bradley, 2000). Moreover, he also found officers encouraged their men to have regimental tattoos like them and even royal patronage. This leaves only the primmer middle classes out of what The Tatler (1903) called The Gentle Art of Tattooing: The Fashionable Craze of Today. It contained illustrations and a puff for a Mr South, said to have operated on upwards of 15,000 persons, including 900 English women (Bradley, 2000: 148/9). Some of the divergence evident in Continental positivist views continues today, though some of the claims of Lombroso might now be seen as mere bombast, for instance this claim, The frequency among criminals of tattooing, which is painful and dangerous, led me to suspect that criminals are less sensitive to pain than the average man (Gibson and Rafter, 2006: 206). And Caplan also notes, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, he continued to argue it was the worst, most savage criminals who bore the most numerous and indecent images (2006: 346).

Caplan notes that Frances, medico-legal and colonial interests sustained a research interest in tattoos at least from the 1830s. (2006: 340) and that the size of Lacassagnes extensive collection of tattoos was in part in pursuance of methodological rigour (2006: 347). Moreover, Bradley (2000: 138) notes the use of tattoos as an identifier of convicts shipped to Australia prior to 1850 and the Register of Distinctive Marks established by the Habitual Criminal Act 1869.
4

He devoted a book (1881) to tattoos and had reproductions of criminal tattoos on some of his dinner plates. Starr (2011: 61) imagines a guest finishing the bouef bourguinon only to find Death to the Authorities inscribed on the dish.
5

That may have required some of the arts of the publicist; Gibson and Rafter note how the Trococephalic rapist of edition 1 took on a more sinister physiognomy by edition 4 (2006: 133).

Caplan says of the Lombroso-Lacassagne spat, that it, prompted a flurry of publications on the subject in several European countries until World War 1 when, what had previously been a steady stream of publications in the major criminological periodicals simply dried up (2006: 339). As we shall see they never went away completely but other disciplines also had their say. other disciplinary engagements with tattoos From coffee table soft porn to diverse journals there is much written and pictured about tattoos what follows is a small selection. Caplans edited collection Written on the Body (2000) sums up much in its title; and, even in the cover illustration, gives the lie to the purely Polynesian origin of the practice of tattooing whilst acknowledging its claim to the etymological origin.6 Captain Cooks sailors may have encountered the tattooing practices of the Pacific but their anchors, mermaids and religious tattoos had a domestic origin. In later work (2006) she notes that Lombroso ignored the long Italian tradition of religiously inspired pilgrim tattoos. Under the banner of ethnography Sanders (1988) discusses temporary body modifications like clothes or hair as marking transitional statuses but tattoos - like foot binding of women amongst the chinese in the past or breast enhancement today - are more permanent. Like others he sees tattoos as a sign of disaffiliation - a voluntary stigma that symbolically isolates the bearer from normals (emphasis in original, 1998: 397) - but also affiliational - Fellow tattooees commonly recognize and acknowledge their shared experience, decorative tastes and relationship to conventional society (397) which raises the question: is there a community of the breast enlarged? Sanders fronts up quickly that his interest started in 1979 in San Francisco when he had a small scarab tattooed.7 His respondents talk of thinking about it or a long time but doing it when they had nothing better to do, sufficient money and somewhere they could be tattooed. Two thirds of the interviewees and questionnaire respondents went in company, often seeing it as having a ritual association - growing up, moving away, negotiating a divorce etc. On the affiliation front he mentions military personnel, motor cycle gangs or sports teams getting appropriate insignia. Sanders (1988) only makes one brief footnoted reference to Lombroso on atavism. Some of the following articles, refreshingly, make none - though crime and deviance remain implicit where it is not explicit. Interestingly Velliquette et al (1998) make no mention of Lombroso or crime and treat the decision to be tattooed as a purely consumer decision. As part of their ethnography one of the researchers had two tattoos from tattooists of opposite gender. Orend and Gagn (2009) also treat tattoos as an act of consumption, noting the rise of corporate tattoos; branding if you like! Lacassagne called tattoos talking scars (cicatrice parlants); but, from a very different perspective Oksanen and Turtiainen, drawing on Sweetman (1999) favour a tattoo narrative, which refers to the way tattooed subjects plot their life through their tattoos (2005: 112). Which suggests criminologists/penologists might be better talking to and with the tattooed themselves. As we shall see later Caplan (2006) speculates on why tattoos have been so popular a criminological topic; here

6 A picture

by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues A Young Daughter of the Picts c1585-8 depicting an entirely tattooed young woman.
7

Irwin (2003) trumps this by marrying her tattooist ethnographic subject and hanging out with multiply tattooed elite collectors!

we might surmise that one reason is that one is not actually obliged to talk to criminals, merely observe them. Conversely, Phillips spent 3 days talking to Gallo a Chicano gang member, tattooist and highly illustrated man. Gallo recognised that he and his fellow gang members were self damned and that, their material strategies for survival in one realm of life all but guarantee their failure in another (2001: 1). Yamada notes, Many yakuzas who decided to devote their lives to the underground society were tattooed as proof of their commitment, loyalty and faithfulness toward it (2009: 321). She notes that whilst tattoos are not illegal those who bear them are often barred from entering pools or saunas. Such ethnographic work and that on Russian Prison Tattoos reminds us that the link between criminality and tattoos is subject to constant skirmishing. And yet Phillips (2001) also notes the appropriation of the very same gang motifs by the white middle class. Like the Maori tattooing, or ta moko, traditional japanese tattoos are going global (Yamada, 2009). But within Japan a global hip hop culture has lead to a different form of tattooing which, contrarily leaves the formerly deviant and underground tattooing as the standard bearer for tradition. At the same time yakuza are said to be seeking to remove tattoos to fit in. Indeed japanese-influenced but western-style single tattoos are now popular amongst japanese youth. Oksanen and Turtiainen (2005) found the lightly tattooed wore their tattoos more lightly, often seeing them as simply fashionable. And all tattoos might be appropriately likened to art, and Irwin (2003) talks of collectors and speaks often of fine art. Since Oksanen and Turtiainens methodology involved analysis of pictures and text in Tattoo magazine women are frequently the subject of the gaze. But men too were also to be looked at. And all respondents recognised the distinction between tattoos for men and women.8 Typical narratives are far from criminal as we find: The 23-year old Mark Postemas chest displays a cross as a sign of his religious conviction (Tattoo, 2001/148: 87). Kevin Williams, a vegetarian, has opted for an artichoke on his leg (Tattoo, 2001/141: 29). Carlos Sanchez, Jr states that he wears a collage of his Mexican heritage (Tattoo, 2002/155: 57) (Oksanen and Turtiainen (2005: 121). I wish I had a better narrative for my single, medium-sized dragon tattoo on my upper arm/shoulder. It was acquired in mid life (no crisis) alone, after much thought and sadly (in the modern sense) done with Lombroso in mind.9 The design reflects my Chinese zodiac sign but not any interest in astrology. I do not regret it, it is intended to stand in contrast to my profession and straight, white, middle class Englishness but I frequently forget its there and dont recall it being any more painful than dental work. Discussion: post-Lombrosian tatisticians

The presumed gender and sexuality appropriateness of various designs is an issue in some forced prison tattooing of gay men (Baldaev et al: 2008).
9

Irwin (2001) sees middle class tattoos as requiring the use of legitimation techniques to negotiate the deviant connotations.

Many of the academic contributions, like those discussed above, acknowledge that tattoos are never solely the preserve of criminals, deviants and the mentally ill before going on to make special claims for the significance of tattoos, or, more often recently, their particular tabulation of them. So it seems appropriate to take some account of the evidence of normality or, at least prevalence of tattoos. Thus Laumann and Derick (2006) phoned a national (USA) probability sample of 253 women and 247 men who were 18 to 50 years of age using random digit dialing technology (33% response rate). 24% had tattoos and this was associated with lack of religious affiliation, extended jail time, previous drinking, and recreational drug use. Even at the highest educational level for which they tested 14% were tattooed but the greatest rate was for those who did not complete high school (40%). Removal of tattoos had been considered by 17% but none had. Whilst this might be seen as an attempt to measure regret it can have more material meanings and consequences in seeking to exit a gang as we shall see. As dermatologists it is not surprising that health issues (particularly in respect of the co-surveyed body piercing) come to the fore. This is clearly an issue and particularly in the case of prison-acquired tattoos as we shall see. Using the same data set, Adams (2009) argues that tattooing is a prime example of the fluidity of deviance and puts Lombroso in the dock for his labelling of tattoos as pathological. Taking tattooing on face, neck and hands as a proxy he talks, following DeMello (1993), of the convict body - those tattoos that mark out those from those acquired as part of the tattoo renaissance (Atkinson and Young 2001). As we shall see many fail to make that distinction, and even those who do can be very firm on the deviant meaning of tattoos; for instance Post (1968) was clear tattoos did indicate a personality disorder while excluding those tattooed for cosmetic or religious reasons. Adams found some statistically significant positive associations were found, thus the strongest predictor of being tattooed at all was having spent three days or more in prison. Having spent three days or more in prison was a stronger and only predictor of convict body tattooing. Interestingly gender had no predictive value. A further confusion for criminological consideration of tattoos is that the State itself has tattooed; perhaps most famously of those marked for slavery and death in the Holocaust. Bradley notes that the Duke of Cambridge, in 1868/69 to a Parliamentary Commission on military discipline, compared the branding of deserters with, the marking most sailors do to themselves as a matter of amusement (2000: 142). But if one remembers the coeval relationship of modern tattoos and criminology the temptation to look for a satisfactory causal link should pass. However the next section does concentrate on those who do seek to statistify such a link. Caplan (2006) considers the reasons for the initial efflorescence of criminological interest in tattoos. First the obviousness of the image which enables even minor prison officials to enter the field of criminology, if only the once. Secondly, its cultural specificity and meaning allowed transnational comparison or repetition. France and Italy lead the way while Romanian studies revealed criminal tattooing to be very rare (Caplan, 2006: 356). Finally, and more woundingly, she notes, it was perfectly possible to avoid any deep engagement with the issues and yet have the satisfaction of making a modest contribution to the project of criminology (2006: 352). Let us modestly engage. Thus we find this British Journal of Criminology (BJC) editorial proclaiming, Our psychopaths with their tattooings are engaged in a very primitive protective practice pathetically trying to express strength and at the same time to ward off evil (April 1969). That BJC editorial was 6

introducing the work of McKerracher and Watson (1969) and Verberne (1969). Whilst both are only short reports they illustrate some of the issues. Interestingly neither mention their debt to their French and Italian forebears but from the height of their learning McKerracher and Watson plunge in with remarks such as these Tattooing is not a widely acclaimed fashion in the modern western world. Around 8 per cent of the general population resort to it [...] Many of these individuals congregate in institutions that cater for disordered social behaviour (emphasis added) (1969: 167). Verberne opens with, Interpretations of the psychological meaning of tattooing and its link with social deviance show some degree of consensus that the practice is associated with an inadequate or threatened sense of self (1969: 173). Another trope of the later tattoo literature is a passing reference to relativistic social and cultural matters before setting out their statistical analysis of tattoos, or tatistics. For instance, McKerracher and Watson admit: Some primitive warrior tribes use it for purposes of intimidation, so that they can present a fearsome appearance. Others may consider it as a mark of beauty rather than of disfiguration. here, erotic self display may the major dynamic In both types of culture it would be more normal to be tattooed than not (1969: 167). They introduce their tatistics in ways that should not surprise, Emotional immaturity is the personality factor nominated by some workers as the primary trait associated with the urge to mutilate the body with tattoos. In common with their forebears and descendants this scientisttribe cannot see tattoos other than mutilation.10 They approvingly quote Lander and Kohn (1943) who found 58% of tattooed against 38% non-tattooed of rejects for the US army to be mentally unstable or socially deviant. And yet Pollak and McKenna complained, It would be regrettable if tattooed people should be labeled lightly as psychotic as such an opinion could induce a new way of malingering (1945: 674). They examined 686 patients at Rampton Special Hospital - 38% subnormal; 28% severely subnormal; 25% Psychopathic and 9% mentally ill - of whom only 105 men had one tattoo or more (the average 8 and the range 1 to 61) and compared with a sample of non-tattooed men. A third of psychopaths had tattoos and 18 out of twenty with 11 or more tattoos were psychopaths. Those with six or more tattoos were associated with breaking and entry, indecent assaults on women (but fewer on boys) and being drunk and disorderly. The tattooed men were markedly less likely to have had delusional or hallucinatory episodes. Unlike Lander and Kohn (1943) they found no relationship between tattoo type and nature of offence. They tentatively conclude, It could almost be said that tattooing was a peripheral indicator of a primary psychopathic syndrome. In the article that follows McKerracher and Watsons, Verberne suggests identity as an organising principle; that is, tattoos are a substitute means of self-identification in people who are deprived of the ordinary means (1969: 173). Ordinary means remain unproblematised. He used a personality questionnaire and found tattooed boys more insecure and depressive and to like group action. And concluded, in one sentence, With the exception perhaps of the trend on Factor O (insecurity, depressive tendency), the finding appear to give little support for the identity hypothesis (1969: 174)!
10

Though Hewitt (1997) uses the term, and non-judgmentally, makes links with bulimia and cutting.

Perhaps one reason that Lombroso et al are not mentioned in such work is that by then he was already starting to be seen as an embarrassment even to arch positivists. Another reason is that, however poor his methodology or eccentric his readings, Lombroso was interested in both the tattoo and the person who bore them as well as the social context and meaning. The trend of this very bare positivism finds its apogee in the inclusion of tattoos in items like the Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form (Walters, White and Denney, 1991) in which they are counted in total and if on face, neck or arms. Thankfully the Youth Justice Boards current Young Offender Assessment Profile methodology Asset does not use tattoos in its calculations. Manuel and Retzlaff (2002) open by buffing the myth of Captain Cooks voyages as the derivation of Western tattooing and mention a vogue for tattoos in the 1920s. Also like many others they attempt to put tattoos and tattooing in context and estimate the numbers of tattooed people in the USA then between 7-12 million before raising the familiar contentions of association with crime, deviance, mental health problems and risk taking. Reviewing the literature they report: a study of 18 Universities found tattoo bearers having more sexual partners; higher tattoo rates amongst young suicides and even a correlation between tattoos and playing Russian roulette! They study 8,574 male inmates in Colarado. A variety of personality types were associated with tattooing, including anti-social, sadistic, negativistic. Mania, Drug Abuse, PTSD etc were also associated with tattooing yet compulsive personality types were relatively less likely to be involved with tattooing. Whilst some of the non-criminological studies are neutral about tattoos, doctors can be as critical as those earlier doctors, Lombroso and Lacassagne, thus Carroll et al (2002) examined tattoos and body piercings amongst attendees at an Adolescent Clinic. Findings were as might be expected but include tattooing as a marker amongst males for violence but piercing as the marker for females and both were makers for risk-taking behaviour. In their sample females were twice as likely to be tattooed and three times as likely to be pierced.11 Writing only recently Rozycki Lozano et al (2011) cite DeMello (1993) but dont use the phrase convict body but do distinguish between prison-themed and prison-acquired tattoos.12 They claim boldly: Although a number of studies have examined the relation between tattooing behavior and inmates, the relationship between prison tattoos, the criminal lifestyle, and recidivism has yet to be explored. (2010:3) They use that other captive audience, college students, to compare incarcerated and nonincarcerated tattoo-bearers. The findings of greater receipt of disciplinary sanctions against the prison tattooed raises the possibility that the association, as with so many reported above, is not statistical but legislative - you have prison tattoos you are trouble. This aside it is difficult to argue

11

They excluded ear lobe piercing. The normality of such piercing or whether it acts as a gateway goes undiscussed but again indicates the flux of socio-cultural definitions of deviance.
12

Criminologists, prisoners and prison officials might recognise a clock face or spiders web as a prison tattoo but not all might.

with the blizzard of statistics presented but they dont advance our understanding much beyond the work of 120 years ago. However, and this is an advance, they note: institutional management of prison tattooing may also prove beneficial, particularly with reducing or eliminating prison and antisocially themed or visible tattoos.[...] Although results of this program remain to be determined, such programs offer promise. Tattooing programs also have the potential to reduce the acquisition of problematic tattoos that negatively affect inmates positive opportunities upon release. An opportunity to acquire tattoos in a prison tattoo parlor could also be used as positive reinforcement of good behavior. (2001: 525) They also suggest the potential for tattoo removal programmes whereas Bonnycastle (2011) examined work in state sanctioned and funded in-prison tattoo programmes in Canada. Here safe tattooing was seen as health issue not a correctional or administrative one. But was also a political one, as the incoming Conservative Government cancelled the scheme. Safe tattooing and voluntary tattoo removal schemes seem to bring the matter of criminals and tattoos full circle but, as weve seen the desire to use tattoos to stigmatise an already stigmatised underclass still exists. conclusion It could be said that criminology derives from Lombrosos observations of military tattoos. Caplan (2006: 339) argues that, the surviving evidence of European tattooing was delivered by criminological controversy. Caplan (2006: 353) also notes that a follower of Lombroso, de Blasio, worried that tattooing was on the wane until the attention criminology paid them had been a part of their revival. But that legacy was a very mixed one as, it also was only through this controversy that the tattoo was vested with its association with criminality (2006: 339). As we have seen their joint history has been just as mixed but many other disciplines have also been marked and made their mark with tattoos. It is time criminology acknowledged its debt to, and made its peace with, tattoos. In reviewing Hillyards Suspect Community criminologist Steven Greer mentions he was briefly detained at Heathrow airport while Special Branch officers checked to see if there were any tattoos on his arms.13 So thats one criminologist without a tattoo; but many others do have one or more. One, of my acquaintance, sports them on his Facebook profile picture. Perhaps this introductory sketch of tattoo theory should now have an empirical side in which the gaze is upon police - many to my knowledge being tattooed - prison workers and other criminal justice workers and finally criminologists.14 It would also seem important to measure the effect of the tatisticians. Have prison administrators seized on such work and, reassured by the science, gone on to target particular prisoners? Have they fallen for what Lacassagne, in criticising Lombroso directly, called the seductive hypothesis (in Starr, 2011: 129). Lacassagne feared that:
13

I too have been stopped on that route. I was not asked to show my arms but questioned about my intentions. An irony was that I was, at the time, a Home Office official. Perhaps the external tattoo of a CND and Vegetarian Society badge marked me out for questioning.
14

Do contact me in confidence, or otherwise, about your tattoos.

The savants could take measurements, record angles and indexes, but the legislators will do nothing but cross their arms or begin to construct prisons and asylums in which to gather these misshapen creatures (in Starr, 2011: 129). To be generous to those discussed above it may be that the most seductive issue here is being published. It is done because it can be done. With some patience and access one can count and categorise tattoos and measure against criminal or prison discipline records like those that Caplan (2006) discusses. Rigorous statistical analysis can then suggest much but still leave many false positives and negatives. Plenty of criminals have no tattoos and plenty of people with tattoos are not criminal. The work of other disciplines mentioned above should reinforce that. And to make a positivist/empirical point against such positivism, how might we explain the recent falls in crime in the face of the rise of tattooing?15 Many early writers linked ethnicity and even race and criminality with tattoos seen as evidence of savagery. Such scientific racism is less common now but perhaps the ongoing interest in tattoos is its faint echo. Irwin notes: Wearing large multicolored or black and gray designs across their arms, legs, chests, necks, hands, and, occasionally, across their faces, the heavily tattooed depart dramatically from light-skin appearance norms (2003: 35). She did not follow up on this, nor suggest any link with racism, and space and available evidence does not permit an investigation of this here. But might one of the attractions for white middle class tattoo-bearers be to experience, however briefly and at a low level, being black: to experience discrimination. And might being black be seen as to be always/already tattooed with all the attached associations of criminality and deviance? And were the tatisticians to discover statistical correlates between ethnicity and crime might we see them as racist? They wisely stick to tattoos. Lombroso may have thought tattoos to be evidence of atavism and Lacassagne saw them as evidence of degeneration, what is clear though is, that for all this biologism, tattoos themselves are not biological. Lombroso came eventually to accept factors other than the biological into his explanations of crime. Lacassange had got there earlier, via his reading of Darwin, which he expresses with a culinary metaphor, The social milieu is the bouillon of criminality; the [born] criminal has no importance until the day that it finds the bouillon that allows it to ferment (in Starr, 2011: 129). Tattoos should be seen as part of that eventual recognition - however condemned, misunderstood or tolerated - of the significance of the social in explanations of crime. Lombrosos interest in tattoos is often seen as part of the general wrong-headedness of early positivism that is either rejected completely or passed over for more sophisticated work. Gibson and Rafters take on Lombroso (2006) tells a more complex tale. His sheer interest in and collection of tattoos was part of a larger whole: his collection of prisoner art and artifacts. 16

15

I am grateful to Mike Hough for this thought which leads me to more playfully think of a British Tattoo Survey to deal with the dark figure of tattooing.
16

indeed trophyisation in Regeners words (2003: 2)

10

Gibson and Rafter draw out the social, indeed the sociological, even in the earliest of Lombrosos work and his growing move away from the purely biological. Regener (2003: 3) notes that as early as 1911, Kurella described Lombroso thus, a philologist, philosopher, mystic, anatomist, anthropologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, sociologist, statistician, and social and political scientist. Caplan (2006) even sees the placing of the tattoo chapter between the biological and moral sections of Criminal Man as significant. Controversially it might be said that Lombroso was an early cultural (if only in the anthropological sense) criminologist. He was certainly a cultured one. Perhaps, though a final thought should be of Lacassagne who Caplan contrasts with Lombroso thus, Lombroso emphasised the anatomic and instinctual where Lacassagne privileged the extrinsic and semiotic (2006: 348, emphasis added). For it is the semiotic that this article argues for, against the anatomic and tatistical that build on Lombrosos immodest instincts. We should conclude like Locards Traite de Criminalistique (1932) that, the practical value of tattoos was limited to that of any other distinguishing mark (Caplan, 2006: 344).

References Adams, J. (2009). marked difference: tattooing and its association with deviance in the United States. Deviant Behavior, 30: 266292 Atkinson, M. & Young, K. (2001). Flesh Journeys: Neo Primitives and the Contemporary Rediscovery or Radical Body Modification. Deviant Behavior 22:117146 Baldaev, D, Murray, D, Sorrell. S, & Vasiliev, S. Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia Volume III: 3 London: Fuel Bonnycastle, K. D. (2011). The Social Organisation of Penal Tattooing in Two Canadian Federal Male Prisons: Locating Sites of Risk for Empirically-Based Health Care Interventions. The Howard Journal 50:1, 1733 Bradley, J. (2000). Body Commodification? Class and Tattoos in Victorian Britain. In Caplan, J. (ed) (2000). Written on the Body London: Reaktion Books British Journal of Criminology (1969). Editorial 9:2 105-107 Caplan, J. (ed) (2000). Written on the Body London: Reaktion Books Caplan, J. (2006). Tattoos and the Discourses of Criminality in Europe. Criminals and Their Scientists: The history of Criminology in International Perspective Becker, P & Wetzell, R. F. (eds) Cambridge University Press Carroll, S. T. Riffenburgh, R. H., Roberts, T. A. & Myhre, E. B. (2002). Tattoos and Body Piercings as Indicators of Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors. Pediatrics 109: 1021-1027 DeMello, M. (1993). The Convict Body: Tattooing among Male Prisoners. Anthropology Today 9: 1013. 11

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