We’ve blogged about tattoos before—looking at whether you can assess juror morality by counting tattoos and whether the location of a tattoo is meaningful (along with a cookbook photo of location and assigned interpretation).

Recently, however, a courtroom in Fresno, California has been dealing with a different issue: sentencing for two gang members who tattooed a 7-year-old boy with a gang icon. One of the two defendants is the boy’s father. Part of what has caught our interest in this story is the use of jury questionnaires where jurors are being asked if they have tattoos.

While this is sometimes done in death penalty cases, the idea of querying potential jurors about their tattoos is an interesting one. In the above case, jurors with tattoos could be useful information for either side of the case—gang sympathizers/members could be readily identified and every one with a tattoo would know the pain involved in being tattooed.

But what about privacy? Suppose I have tattoos I don’t want you to know about? While I doubt anyone will strip search jurors for body art examination—some jurors may not realize they do not have to disclose everything.

Tattoos can be artistic expression meant for public viewing or they can be meant to stay private and secretly enjoyed by oneself or a select few. As a trial consultant, I enjoy seeing people’s tattoos but I am intensely interested in seeing the tattoos you don’t want me to see. They give me secret information. Access to who you are privately and what biases you may bring in to the jury room with you. This is part of what I love about trial consulting. It lets me be a private detective. I learn things about what sorts of attitudes and experiences allow jurors to hear or result in them closing off their minds to information.

Sometimes though—access should be limited. When it is simply not my right to ‘see private tattoos’? Or other private beliefs and ideas? At what point do the parties rights to a fair trial interfere with the private citizen’s right to privacy? It’s an odd question for tattoos to raise but there you have it.

Maybe you can. While ink on the skin doesn’t mean what it used to (see our post here) it still is a concern for many among us. Body art/ink has become mainstream as evidenced by its presence among a wide cross-section of the population. Even the very educated have tattoos. One of the blogs at Discover Magazine’s website recently uploaded a variety of ‘science’ tattoos which decorate the bodies of scientific researchers. Very amusing.

But parents worry. And so do litigators choosing juries. What do those tattoos mean? There’s research for that! Thanks to researchers at Texas Tech, parents and litigators everywhere can know what those tattoos mean. In essence, tattoos are like real estate: “The key factors are density and location, location, location”.

Here’s what they did:

Researchers counted the number of tattoos and piercings (and noted just where on the body the markings or piercings were located) and then assessed ‘deviance’ (in the form of marijuana use, occasional use of other drugs, being arrested for a crime, cheating on college work, binge drinking, and/or having multiple sex partners).

And here’s what they found:

Those who had 4 or more tattoos, 7 or more body piercings or piercings of their nipples and genitals (which hopefully will be difficult for most parents and litigators to assess) were more likely to report deviant behavior.

To a very significant degree, tattoos and piercing is a sign of style and fashion, rather than rebellion.  Researchers concluded that the growing acceptance of body art means those with truly deviant tendencies have to go a step further (multiple tattoos or nipple piercings) to maintain their sense of social distance. You have to try harder to make it clear that you are an outsider.  So you might be able to assess social alienation and disenfranchisement by counting tattoos, but take it easy on wondering about the ones you can’t see.