Canadians Can Prison Tattoo Plan. The conservative Canadian government's move to ax the trial prison tattoo program dominated the tattoo headlines the week. The program was revolutionary in that it sought to curb the spread of Hepatitis and potentially AIDS among inmates by creating tattoo parlors within prison walls that follow strict hygiene rules as opposed to the status quo of shared needles or other sharp implements being passed around, bloody and infected.

Conservative editorials cheered the move, calling it smart cost cutting over the Liberals' bleeding heart spending. Some went as far as saying who cares if prisoners contract AIDS or Hep C. I just love that conservative compassion at work.

This view is shortsighted, both from a health perspective and budgetary. According to the CP, prisoners are 10 times more likely to contract AIDS and 30 times more likely to contract Hep C. While the conservatives shrug it off as a prison problem they forget one very large factor: most of the prisoners will be released. As in, released on the streets, mingling with the daughters of those right wingers who want to rebel against daddy and get naughty with a roughneck, if only for a night of street cred. And a lifetime of disease.

The Tories banished the program twisting the words of human rights groups around claiming that prisoners do not have a right to a tattoo. That's not the issue. The issue is keeping jails from being incubators of deadly viruses. The more people who contract these viruses in prison, the more people there are spreading them among law abiders upon release. How difficult is that to understand?

The other argument is cost. The program cost around $600,000 in the trial year where it was implemented in six Canadian federal prisons. The costs included sterilization equipment, single-use tattoo materials, as well as regular health screenings for inmates, and some tattoo training—largely related to safety and education on infectious diseases. Taxpayer money to teach tattooing! Heaven forefend! Again, a shortsighted, alarmist approach.

The reality is that that it is more financially burdensome on taxpayers and the public health system to treat Hep C and AIDS patients than to spend this kind of money of prevention. Leon Mar of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network offered stats to the Canadian Press: "The annual cost of treating someone with HIV is $20,000 while caring for a Hepatitis C patient costs $25,000." Multiply this by those infected and you have a cost much greater than that spent by those tax-and-spend liberals. It's simple math.

Of course, the conservative argument is that no one is forcing prisoners to tattoo each other and spread disease. But tattoos and prison are as old as Republican scandal, and just as natural and ever-present. Prisoners mark their bodies to denote affiliation, often as a way to protect themselves. They jerk off to the pin-ups staring up at them from their skin. They write their tragedies permanently on the outside to release the demons within. Tattooing cannot be stopped. It's too powerful. But the spread of disease can be. Unfortunately bad politics often get in the way of reason.


Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.