PRISON TATTOOS GO STRAIGHT

Pilot Project Costing $700,000 Will Give Inmates Access To Clean,
Legal Needlework

VANCOUVER -- In shadowy corners in Canadian prisons, you can trade
cigarettes, jewellery or drugs to get an illegal tattoo. But if you
don't want to get sick from the dirty needle, your only currency is
trust.

Tattoo artist Natalie Dubreuil, an inmate at the Fraser Valley
Institution for Women near Abbotsford, trusted her system: She would
tell sister inmates to bring their own filed-down sewing needles, pen
barrels and Walkman motors for her to fashion into makeshift tattoo
guns.

She would tell the women to dispose of them, too. Later, if their
blood tested positive for HIV or hepatitis C, they couldn't point a
finger at Ms. Dubreuil.

"It was how I built my credibility," she recalled in an interview at
Fraser Valley. "In prison, it's hostile ground, right? I had to save
myself in all this."

But in her 11 years in prison for robbery and drug offences, the
31-year-old hasn't seen many people who offered relatively safe tattoos.

Tattoos are a part of prison culture, she noted, and if people want
them, they'll get them from anyone.

"I've seen lots of infections. Their methods are pretty careless. I
would never do it. But people get desperate."

Next week, Ms. Dubreuil will become the first woman to do a legal
tattoo in a Canadian prison. It's part of a pilot program by
Correctional Service Canada in six prisons, aimed at making it safer
for inmates to get tattoos.

For $5, about a day's wage in prison, an inmate can have a two-hour
session with Ms. Dubreuil and be tattooed with any design, as long as
it isn't obscene or gang-related.

The program will cost about $700,000, funded by the Canadian Strategy
on HIV/AIDS through the Public Health Agency of Canada, and will run
until March 31.

Four of the prisons -- in Renous, N.B.; Cowansville, Que.; Bath, Ont.;
and Stony Mountain, Man. -- started tattoo parlours in August. In
British Columbia, the Matsqui Institution, a medium-security men's
prison in Abbotsford, started one this month.

Matsqui's tattoo parlour is in the prison's old barbershop,
overlooking a gym where prisoners lift weights. Inmates are proud to
take off their shirts and show off inked snakes, flowers and Celtic
signs. Dean Smith, 26, said half his body is etched with aboriginal
art because he is half Nisga'a.

Each prisoner tattoo artist and his, or her, apprentice is trained in
tattooing and workplace safety. Tyler Thomas, 22, says those skills
will help him when he is released from Matsqui next year.

"It's minor surgery," said Mr. Thomas, who is serving time for robbery
and possession of drugs. He now knows to wear face gear to protect his
eyes from splashing of body fluids, and knows that needles need to be
sterilized to remove bacteria and dust.

Prison staff keep track of the needles, which can be used only in the
designated parlour.

Mr. Thomas said the first illicit tattoo he gave "on the range" was
the number 187, the California Penal Code section on murder.

"If it's your first [time in prison], you want a hard tattoo; you're
in the pen," he said. "You want skulls and flames and razor wire. I
think it's kind of a rebellious thing for everybody.

"But I've done a few that are a tribute to family or daughters. Not
your classic spider web on the elbow [which stands] for time, or tears
on the eyes for murder. It's respect for your loved ones. That stuff I
get a lot."

He said he did 40 illicit tattoos, and has done 25 in Matsqui's new
parlour. He contracted hepatitis C several years ago when he got a
skull tattoo on his left arm, which makes him doubly careful. Now in
his fourth year behind bars, he has another tattoo emblazoned across
his abdomen: the word "Liberty."

At Fraser Valley, 29-year-old Tara Westgarde is serving time for her
part in an armed robbery with a sawed-off shotgun. She said she did it
to buy drugs -- methadone, heroine, cocaine -- before she cleaned up
in 2004. She wants Ms. Dubreuil to put a tattoo on her arm next week:
a butterfly.

"It symbolizes change," she said. "I've done the most changes in my
life in the past two years. I've been clean off drugs for the past two
years."

The correctional service estimates that prisoners' HIV rate is 10
times higher than that of the outside population; the hepatitis C
infection rate is 30 times higher. At Matsqui, about 40 per cent of
men have hepatitis C; at Fraser Valley, 50 per cent of women have it.

About 2 per cent of male prisoners test positive for HIV, according to
the Toronto-based HIV/AIDS Legal Advocacy Network, a charitable
organization. The rate for female prisoners is three times higher, it
says.

Terry Howard, prison outreach worker for the B.C. Persons with AIDS
Society, a support and advocacy group, believes the prison tattoo
pilot program was needlessly delayed for 10 years because of a lack of
political will. If the program ends in March as scheduled, there won't
be enough time to evaluate its impact, he said.

"If they say they'll drop it after not seeing any changes after only
four months, we'll be mad as hell. It takes years to see the infection
rates drop."

He added the program is widely expected to be a first step to a
needle-exchange project, which will directly target the spread of
disease drug injection.

But the tattoo program has drawn strong objections from the Union of
Canadian Correctional Officers, which says prison guards already worry
about being poked by dangerous, illicit needles during violent
exchanges or during regular searches of inmates.

John Williams, president of the union's Pacific region, said
taxpayers' money shouldn't be spent on something that increases the
number of needles in prisons and the dangers to guards.

Health officials at Matsqui say it costs about $20,000 a year to treat
a patient with hepatitis, and medication for an AIDS patient costs
about $25,000 a year. The tattoo program there will cost $100,000 to
run in its first year, they said.

"If we kept four or five people disease free, our job is complete,"
said Lucky Belliveau, an apprentice tattooist at Matsqui. "Five or
more, great. But if it was just one, that would be worth it, too."