Particularly considering that tattooing is generally frowned upon in Japan, so not many individuals carry visible tattoos. The mafia adopted this practice and began to mark themselves, to grossly simplify a long and complex history.Īs a matter of fact, expansive tattoos are no longer synonymous with mafia affiliation in Japan – it’s impractical, for obvious reasons, and draws undue attention. Tattooing in Japan has long had a connection with criminal activity – hundreds of years ago, the authorities used facial tattoos to permanently mark and shame criminals. When thinking of criminal-related tattoos, one of the key examples that will come to mind are the impressive full-body tattoos of the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza. Recommended Reading: Check out our inspirational bear tattoo guide. The original Blood gang was called the Compton Pirus (named after West Piru street in Los Angeles), so this is a throwback to the gang’s origins. One example is the 13/13 cipher – splitting the alphabet in half and replacing the letters from the first half with those of the second, and vice versa – A becomes N, and N becomes A, B becomes O and O becomes B, etc.īesides the use of code, Blood members will often have the letters MOB tattooed – standing for ‘Member of Blood’.
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The Bloods also use forms of code in their markings. One form involves replacing individual letters in a word with the letter’s number in the alphabet – 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C, etc.įor instance, the numbers 211 tattooed on a Crip member stand for ‘BK’, which in turn means ‘Blood Killer’ – indicating the individual has killed a member of the rival gang, the Bloods. Alongside the use of the symbol of a three-pointed or six-pointed crown, the Crips use code in a lot of their tattoos. The Crips are an infamous gang based in the coastal regions of southern California, locked in bitter rivalry with the Bloods. Many also use codes and ciphers, such as those adopted by California’s Crips and Bloods. Many criminal groups are highly secretive about their markings – understandably – and don’t make them public knowledge.
It would be impossible to list the tattoos of all the gangs in the world – partly because there are so many of them, and partly because this is not exactly a well-researched subject. In some circles, this is marked by crosses on the person’s knuckles – one cross for each prison sentence. Prison tattoos can also have more neutral meanings, such as the number of times the person has been to prison. Recommended Next: Don’t miss our guide to samurai tattoos next! The former increases the person’s standing within the group, while the other is meant to shame them and mark them as traitors.
This can either be a form of positive recognition – if the crime was seen as beneficial to the criminal group – or of punishment – if the crime is something that the group disapproves of. For instance, the tattoo could indicate the crime the person has committed that resulted in their incarceration. Typically, these are placed somewhere highly visible and impossible to hide, such as the person’s face.įor criminal groups in prisons, tattoos have further meanings. Sometimes, they are used as punishment, often given forcibly (without the person’s consent). These tattoos are done voluntarily, meaning the individual has to agree to receive the tattoo.īut gang tattoos aren’t always a ‘positive’ thing. Some gang tattoos are meant as tokens of recognition for the individual’s rank and experience, the specific skills they have, or the crimes they’ve committed in the course of their activity within the group. These tattoos and their meanings vary from group to group, as every gang has its own ‘tattoo language’, so to speak. Members of certain criminal gangs and mafia groups in and out of prison carry tattoos imbued with highly specific meanings. Tattoos serve a range of purposes in criminal gangs, and every gang has a more or less secret set of meanings associated with specific designs.Īs mysterious as they are intriguing, gang-related tattoos have aroused interest and curiosity for decades.