By Rachel Hutton
Star Tribune
STILLWATER, Minn. — Daniel Gonzales pressed a tattoo needle into Israel Ray Gaitan’s bare back, where a Mayan calendar spanned Gaitan’s shoulder blades. Gonzales had already logged 30 hours tattooing the elaborate design in honor of Gaitan’s mother.
Gonzales wasn’t sure how Gaitan sat through the ordeal: Tattoos in the spinal area hurt a lot. “Don’t let pain get you down and keep moving forward,” Gaitan said of the strategy that has guided him through 33 years of incarceration.
This tattoo parlor resembles any other licensed by the state of Minnesota except for its location: Stillwater prison. Both Gaitan and Gonzales are convicted murderers serving time there.
Stillwater’s two-year-old tattoo apprentice program is one of the first in U.S. prisons. The program offers a new rehabilitation option alongside the typical barbering and construction trades.
The idea behind it is twofold: Teach inmates job skills and reduce the spread of hepatitis C, which can be transmitted by unsanctioned, ad hoc tattooing in the cells.
Each year, the state Department of Corrections typically spends nearly $1 million on hepatitis C medications, prison administrators say. Training prisoners to do safe tattooing can reduce that expense, along with the cost to society when former inmates relapse into criminal behavior. Roughly half of released state prisoners return to prison within 5 years, and stable employment has been shown to reduce reoffending.
“This gives me a sense of purpose,” said Gonzales, who was licensed through the program a year ago and has 16 years left on his sentence. “We’re all going to be out there one day.”
Incarcerated for the past decade, Gonzales learned to tattoo in the cells, a practice he described as “tattooing from scratch, using damn near anything that you can get your hands on.”
He said inmates make their own tattoo guns from everyday objects, such as the barrel of a pen, the motor from a beard trimmer or a sharpened guitar string. Ink is made from soot.
Gonzales said infections are mostly warded off by wishful thinking, but he said he knew someone who once contracted an antibiotic-resistant staph infection.
Prisoners seek tattoos to differentiate and express themselves in an environment with little autonomy, Gonzales said. Everyone wears the same plain, Corrections Department -approved clothing in blue, white or gray.
“When you come into prison, you’re really stripped of your identity,” Gonzales said. “Getting tattooed is a bold statement to say, ‘I’m an individual, I’m a person.’ ”
Justin Jimenez, a tattoo artist who has owned Electric Blue Tattoo Co. in Forest Lake since 2019, was hired by Stillwater to mentor and train prisoners in the program.
So far, four apprentices have graduated from the program. After two were recently released, two newcomers filled their spots. Jimenez teaches the apprentices about the history of tattoo styles and blood-borne pathogens, and demonstrates tattooing by raffling off free ink for prison staff.
The apprentices refine their drawing skills on paper before learning to use tattoo machines on fake skin. Then they practice on themselves and each other before offering their services to other prisoners.
The apprentices have already inked a few hundred clients, who must be discipline-free for six months, pay $25 a session and have their design approved.
Some images, such as those with anything gang-related, nudity or vulgarity, are forbidden. Jimenez said the designs that program clients receive aren’t the crude inkings typical of prison tattoos.
The entire tattoo industry has become more professionalized, Jimenez said, as body ink has gone mainstream and shed its rough-and-tumble stigma.
“It’s not all skulls and barbed wire anymore,” he said. “We’re doing tons of really fine art.”
Prisoners have requested teapots, butterflies, flowers and hearts, as well as tributes to family members. Many of the tattoos have sentimental value, said Marina Fuhrman, a Corrections Department manager who works with the program.
Prisoners can also have old tattoos covered. One, for example, had a tiger’s face inked over a swastika.
Fuhrman said the tattoo parlor has improved the prisoner-staff dynamic. “This shop created its own culture, which gives people a sense of humanity and normalcy,” she said.
Added Jimenez: “It presented a common ground. Art is something that everyone from all walks of life can enjoy.”
While some have balked at the tattoo program’s $130,000 annual budget, which includes Jimenez’s salary, the initiative can combat the spread of an expensive disease. The Corrections Department typically treats close to 100 cases of hepatitis C each year at a cost of $12,000 to $51,000 per inmate.
Though the number of hepatitis C patients has declined since the tattoo program launched, it’s uncertain how much it has contributed to the improvement; the Corrections Department doesn’t track cases acquired in prison.
But Fuhrman said violations for tattooing in Stillwater’s cells have plummeted since the parlor opened, dropping from as many as eight to 10 infractions a month to hardly any.
She said the prison plans to continue the tattoo program until the facility’s planned closure in 2029. It will then be transitioned to another facility and possibly expanded.
Stillwater tattoo artist Courtney Ocegueda, who is serving time for murder, said the program has given him hope of finding stability as he anticipates his release in 2033. He said many Stillwater prisoners are trying to leave their former ways behind — “being reckless and acting the fool” — and transform their lives for the better.
“We’re trying to take advantage of what’s being given to us, so people can see we’re not just throwaways,” he said. “We all got somebody that cares about us, and we’re trying to do better for them and for us.”
Chris Calvillo, owner of No Joke Tattoo Studios in White Bear Lake, was imprisoned at Stillwater in the early 2000s. He said that if the prison had offered the apprenticeship program then, he likely would have taken the path to his dream job a lot sooner, instead of returning to crime and incarceration.
Calvillo employs several tattoo artists who were once in prison. Among them is Corey Schuck, who was licensed at Stillwater and joined No Joke after transitioning to work release last fall.
Schuck was convicted of felony assault, and the contours of his crime resemble those of other tattoo-program participants: after being provoked or angered, quickly retaliating with a weapon.
Those impulsive, violent acts are a striking contrast to tattooing, a process Schuck described as painstaking, almost meditative.
“I don’t think about my problems,” he said. “I just think about pulling this line straight or shading this shade.”
Schuck said the patience he cultivated while in prison and learning tattooing improved his ability to keep his emotions in check. “I’ve been calmer about things,” he said. “My reaction isn’t to quick-spit anger, like it used to be.”
Calvillo calls tattooing “a form of teaching patience within yourself.” He said he believes Schuck and other felons he employs aren’t inclined to return to their former criminal behavior now that they’ve made something of themselves and have so much at stake.
“It gives you a sense of pride, of being somebody,” Calvillo said of a career as a tattoo artist. “Those were decisions made when you didn’t have all that.”
Do programs like prison tattoo apprenticeships help improve inmate behavior and culture inside facilities? Why or why not?
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