Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

Darcy Smittenaar

ANT 101 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Megan Douglass

March 17, 2014 

Tattooing in American Penitentiaries and Malaysia

For millennia, the peoples of many non-Western cultures have used their skins as a “canvas upon which human differences can be written and read” (Schildkrout, 2004, p. 319).  Such inscriptions on a person’s body can convey which rites of passage the individual has passed, their social status within their culture, or even their position on certain arguments.  The culture of United States prisons and that of Malaysia could not be more different—prisoners in the United States have been convicted of crimes, which the average Malaysian has not—but their approaches and attitudes toward tattooing, are remarkably similar.

Some Malaysian tattoos have spiritual significance, but such tattoos are mostly found in the older generation, as “younger generations aren’t that religious anymore and you will see that most of their tattoos are to express their love to their partners or simply being artistic in nature” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 38).

Anthropologists Demello (1993) and McNaughton (2007) do not go into the spiritual aspects of prison tattoos, but according to Demello (1993), the most common type of tattoo among convicts is the loca, which tells the viewer the convict’s origins, be they neighborhood or gang affiliation.  Female inmates might also inscribe their lovers’ names in tattoos, but Demello’s work focuses only on male convicts (Demello, 1993).

Another difference between tattoos among American male convicts and those of Malaysian individuals is payment.  In prison, men do not have as much money as those on the outside, so they pay a tattoo artist either smaller amounts of money than would be paid to artists in legitimate tattoo parlors, or they barter with items such as drugs (Demello, 1993).  As anthropologists Lim, Ting, Leo and Jayanthy’s (2013) goal was to study perception of tattoos in Malaysia, they did not go into the method by which Malaysians acquire tattoos.

Most prison tattoos are black-and-white only, although “prison tattoos can range from technologically primitive to relatively advanced.”  Due to the illegality of tattooing in prison, most convict tattoo artists have to make due with whatever technology they can find to ply their art.  Tattoos in prison are usually made either by hand-picking the design with a needle dipped in ink, or by creating a sort of “homemade rotary machine” using the motors from common household appliances, such as an electric razor or cassette player, and a ball-point pen.  Professional tattooing inks are unavailable to convicts, so they use the ink from black ball-point pens in their tattoos (Demello, 1993, p. 10).

In Malaysia, unless the wearer of a tattoo has been incarcerated before, such an individual’s tattoo can be either black-and-white or in color.  If they have been incarcerated, any tattoos gained during that imprisonment would be black-and-white only, due to the unavailability of professional tattooing inks in prison.  Tattoos in Malaysia may not be as intricately shaded as tattoos on men from American prisons, as the homemade rotary machine’s need to use only one needle at a time makes for particularly fine lines (Demello, 1993).

Among prisoners in American penitentiaries, McNaughton suggests, tattoos are a form of visual argument (2007).  In Malaysia, however, there are other reasons for individuals to get tattoos, some of which are also shared by American prisoners: expression of social position (Demello, 1993), art, spirituality and remembrance of important happenings.  In all cases, tattooing is seen as “a form of self-expression.”

Like in American prisons, in Malaysia, there is a feeling that those with tattoos have somehow gone over to the dark—that they “have a history with triad gangsters or may have been criminals or prisoners before” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).  The negative connotations of tattooing do not seem to affect American penitentiary prisoners until they have left the prison system—and then it is those individuals outside their prison culture who show negative reactions to their tattoos, not unlike mainstream Malaysians to those with tattoos in general.

Both prison tattoos and tattoos on those inscribed on Malaysian individuals can express the person’s position in society.  In fact, Demello (1993) says, “tattoos make the body culturally visible,” and “prison tattoos . . . make the body especially obvious, and more importantly, express . . . the social position which that body occupies” (Demello, 1993, p. 10).  A tattoo that identifies a prisoner with a specific ethnic group “is another means of identifying with a particular community as well as differentiating oneself from other groups in prison” (Demello, 1993, p. 11).  This is no less true in Malaysia, where those individuals interviewed expressed their belief that tattoos are “a form of self-expression” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).

Part of the self is that self’s place in society, and certainly many tattoos have such cultural significance.  Even a tattoo that is meant as a memorial for a significant event, or for the death of a loved one, shows that the person with the memorial tattoo had a part in that event, or a place in the life of the dead individual.  Like men in American penitentiaries memorializing their time in prison with tattoos, Malaysians get tattoos to remind them of significant moments, “such as marriage, a new born child and other milestones in life” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 38).

Prison tattoos show not only the prison or prisons in which the individual has done time, but also that person’s reputation and status among the prisoners while he or she was incarcerated, as well as his or her stance on certain issues within, or possibly without, the prison.  Those incarcerated are sometimes unable to speak to each other, or have any significant “face-to-face dialogue,” and therefore, use tattoos “to engage the rhetoric of the everyday” (McNaughton, 2007, p. 133).  The penitentiary is not a public setting, but it is still a social one; the inmates’ choices of expression are limited, and so they turn to “non-traditional avenues for social communication” (McNaughton, 2007, p. 134).  To a lesser extent, this happens in Malaysia, as a form of self-expression, such as a way to “‘customize’ themselves to the form they want others to see them as” (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013, p. 39).  However, since the average Malaysian is not incarcerated, they often have other ways to express themselves around each other which have been denied to American convicts.

The feeling that those with tattoos are not as good or virtuous as others is common both in the American penitentiary system and in Malaysia.  In Malaysia, tattoos are associated with the triads and prison, and make those without tattoos nervous.  Many Malaysian employers also will not hire someone with obvious, visible tattoos (Lim, Ting, Leo & Jayanthy, 2013).

The same goes for American convicts.  It is illegal to get tattoos in American penitentiaries, so the “model prisoners,” the “inmates,” will not get them; only the hardened criminals—those convicted of multiple offenses, those who demand respect because it is the only thing that has not been taken from them, those serving long jail terms—will get tattoos in prison (Demello, 1993, p. 12).  Because only the hardened criminals go against the system enough to acquire tattoos while incarcerated, when—or if—they are finally set free from the penitentiary, they are seen as somehow more dangerous, more rebellious, than other former prisoners.

Despite the significant differences in the overall cultures of American penitentiaries and the Malaysian public, both cultures’ views and practices when it comes to tattoos are remarkably similar.

 

References

Demello, M. (1993).  The Convict Body: Tattooing Among Male American Prisoners. Anthropology Today, 9 (6), 10-13. Doi: 10.2307/2783218

Lim, W. M., Ting, D. H., Leo, E., & Jayanthy, C. (2013). Contemporary perceptions of body modifications and its acceptability in the asian society: A case of tattoos and body piercings. Asian Social Science, 9(10), 37-42. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1445001008?accountid=32521

McNaughton, M. (2007). Hard cases: prison tattooing as visual argument.(Essay). Argumentation And Advocacy, (3-4), 133.

Schildkrout, E. (2004). INSCRIBING THE BODY. Annual Review Of Anthropology, 33(1), 319-344. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143947