Inmate Tattoos and In-Prison and Post-Prison Violent Behavior.

In the Article Inmate tattoos and in-prison and post-prison Violent behavior By William D. Bales, Thomas Blomberg, and Kevin Waters It talked about and went over prisoners with tattoos and prisoners with out tattoos and how their violent behavior either in prison or after prison increased or decreased.  They talked about a juvenile prison in Australia and the findings were that inmates released from custody with tattoos were significantly more likely to be reconvicted for a new violent offense, But on the other had there were no differences found between tattooed and non tatooed inmates in relation to conviction of any new crime or reconviction for non violent new offenses. It also talked about how African American males were more likely to recidivate in criminal activity than caucasian males. The findings for the overall study were that males, yonger and black inmates have higher rated of recidivism while there is no Hispanic effect. Also that inmates that were incarcerated for a violent, drug or other offenses have lower recidivism rates than those on a term of incarceration for property crime. Also proven that inmates with a higher education level are significantly less likely to recidivate. Other findings were that the more the tattoos the prisoner has increases the likelihood of inmates commiting one or more violent behavior infractions during their imprisonment and are more likely to recidivate in their crimes three years after being released from prison.

After reading this Article it made me think about how people look at tattoos and how tattoos are seen as a way of categorizing populations and how they have such a negative conotation with them. When reading this it made me think about how yes when people go to prison most of them come out with more tattoos that they have went in with and how based off their number of tattoos how they are judged by saying that they are more likely to end up back in the system after being released i think that its sort of unfair to the population of inmates and ex-convicts that have multiple tattoos that are very successful after being incarcerated. I am really interested on what other people think about this topic and their points of view. Do you think that tattoos are a way to gauge peoples behavior and life choices?

http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/sociology/docview/1705563142/A1802F3EDCD542D2PQ/1?accountid=14729