This tattoo is one of the most famous designs in the prison world and can mean several things but generally, if you see an inmate with a teardrop tattooed under his eye, it means that either the inmate is serving a long sentence. imprisonment, or he has already committed a murder, because the tear here refers to sadness and the fact of having cried for the mother of a person who has been killed. This tattoo can also mean that he has committed an assassination attempt or that a friend of the inmate has been murdered and that he is seeking revenge. Overall, a tear filled with ink means that the prisoner has at least one crime under his belt, and moreover with each murder, the prisoner has another tear added.
Since the dawn of humanity, tattooing has always been a form of graphic expression, like the famous tribal tattoos, signifying the belonging of individuals to a clan, but tattooing also represents a body ornament favored by millions of people. from different regions of the globe and from different cultures, origins or social classes. Beyond its aesthetic interest, tattooing reveals several aspects and invades all environments. He takes to the streets and enters prisons, he is taken up by the greatest artistic personalities in the world of rap or even sport, he turns into an instrument of discrimination, or of distinction, but he has always with him, the scent of sulfur, rebellion and non-conformism.
And if nowadays, getting a tattoo is an altogether banal action, tattoos were first the prerogative of a minority, individuals considered as marginal or even metal fans or punks, but in the prison environment, the tattoo takes on a whole new meaning. What is the meaning of tattoos? Indeed, among prisoners, certain tattoos have a very specific meaning, and if overall, they represent a way of showing one’s belonging to a group, or simply a way of imposing oneself and deterring other prisoners, they can constitute they alone are a real CV of the prisoner for those who know how to decode their meaning, and reveal information such as the number of years spent in prison for example, or even the criminal history of the prisoner, real identifiers therefore.
