THE NEEDLE & THE DAMAGE DONE

Why Canadian Prisons Are Making It Easier For Inmates To Get Inked

The first tattoo was an eagle traced down the side of an inmate's
calf. The tattoo gun consisted of a sewing needle, some guitar string
and a motor from a CD player.

Mark Hewitt created his first tattoo in 1998, using crude equipment
scrounged up at Frontenac Institution where he had started serving
his sentence for break-and-enters.

Since then, Mr. Hewitt has inked thousands more tattoos on fellow
inmates -- skulls, dragons, eight balls; among the most common
insignia for men serving time.

In prison culture, where tattoos are almost a given, etching biceps
and backs with ink is routine, even if it happens in dark corners
with sketchy equipment.

"As soon as you start, a couple guys see your pieces and then
everyone wants one," said Mr. Hewitt, a tall, serious, 38-year-old.

On a recent afternoon at Bath Institution near Kingston, Mr. Hewitt
sat down for another tattoo session. He started by washing his hands
and layering three pairs of surgical gloves over his long fingers. It
takes about 45 minutes for Mr. Hewitt to set up these days, and by
the end, he looks more like a surgeon than an inmate.

Mr. Hewitt's workshop is a small, sterile room, which is now the
official "tattoo shop" at Bath. The prison is one of six Canadian
penitentiaries participating in the Safer Tattooing Practices
Initiative, a pilot program aimed at reducing the spread of disease
among inmates.

The Bath program started last August and is slated for review after one year.

Tattoo artists like Mr. Hewitt go through safety training and work
under the watch of prison staff, who supply the needles and ink. The
$700,000 program is a Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) program,
funded by the Federal Initiative to Address HIV/AIDS in Canada.

Inmates know the risks of tattooing -- unsterilized needles, ink
"pour backs" and makeshift equipment all put prison populations, with
soaring HIV and hepatitis-C rates, at risk. These men have HIV
infection rates seven to 10 times higher than the general population
and hepatitis C rates that are 30 times higher, according to CSC.

On this afternoon, 47-year-old Bill Hunter has paid $10 -- about two
days of prison wages -- for a full day in the tattoo shop. Mr. Hewitt
will "touch up" his tattoos, adding colour to the black, spiky flames
on Mr. Hunter's right forearm.

"I'm going to clean up the mess that's on there right now -- sharpen
it up a bit," said Mr. Hewitt, as he traced over the design with a
surgical pen.

After eight years in prison, Mr. Hunter has nine tattoos that snake
up and down his arms. The flames are part of his first prison tattoo
- -- it's a complex patchwork of a heart, his wife's initials and the
letters NFLD, for his home province.

At the time he got that tattoo, no one spoke much about hepatitis C,
said Mr. Hunter, although he was always careful, making his own
tattoo guns and getting tested regularly. Everyone in prison knows
about hepatitis C now, he said.

The colour being carved into Mr. Hunter's skin isn't usually
available to men when they're hustling for ink, making it out of
materials like ashes. Faded, poor-quality black tattoos are obvious
prison marks that many men are trying to cover up.

"If guys are doing a long time, you can tell that they have a
jailhouse tattoo because of the quality of colour or the lack of
colour. They can do things now so they're not walking out with
jailhouse tattoos," said Dave Carmody, Bath's social program officer
overseeing the tattooing program.

Mr. Carmody discusses proposed tattoos with inmates before they sign
up for a session. There are rules: No letters, no dates, no tattoos
above the collarbone or below the wrist. Currently, about 40 men are
waiting for tattoos at Bath.

After eight years tattooing "on the inside," Mr. Hewitt has pretty
much mastered dragons and skulls. When he was tattooing illicitly,
some men -- usually hot-headed young guys who thought they'd be
spending a lot of time in jail -- would ask for neck tattoos or
garish pieces, said Mr. Hewitt.

"If they go out and want to get a job ... they don't think about it," he said.

In the United States, prison tattoos are often part of complex prison
subculture where designs carry coded meanings -- a tear drop, for
example, to signify murder or loss of freedom -- or gang insignia. In
Canada, inmates more often just like the art or want to tell a story,
said Mr. Hewitt.

In his Newfoundland lilt, Mr. Hunter spoke about the tattoo on his
right bicep where an eight ball, a pair of dice and a dead man's hand
are etched to mimic the artwork found on an old motorbike.

Jim Hannah, a 38-year-old serving time for manslaughter, recently had
Mr. Hewitt pen a soaring dragon on his back. If he gets out of Bath,
he wants portraits of his two children tattooed on his chest.

"Some guys just get it for a piece of artwork. Other guys have
reasoning behind it. In a sleeve or a back piece, there's a story,"
said Mr. Hannah.

While the tattooing pilot program has proven popular with inmates,
the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers has fiercely opposed the
initiative, claiming it endangers their workers and is not proven
effective in decreasing the spread of infectious disease.

"As far as we're concerned, it's lip service for the Canadian public
at their, the taxpayers', expense," said Sylvain Martel, the union's
national president.

Illegal tattooing is entrenched in the prison subculture and will not
be changed by this program, said Mr. Martel, noting that several
years ago the CSC had a tattoo removal program for prisoners.

He fears needles from the tattoo shops could be used against prison
workers and said that inmates steal supplies and continue tattooing
illicitly. His union has not ruled out taking their concerns to politicians.

At the Bath tattoo shop, Mr. Hewitt insisted that the cost of the
program is worth it.

"The community is always thinking about the cost, the cost, the cost.
But 99 per cent of us are going to get out and any disease we get in
here, we're going to bring out," he said.

Mr. Hewitt ended his day by applying bandages over Mr. Hunter's now
orangey-red flames. The tattooist is preparing for release from
prison next week and appears hesitant about whether he'll continue
this work."I've only been doing it inside for the last eight years,"
he said. "I haven't been outside to try it yet."