All humans have biases, whether consciously or unconsciously, but it is the job of a professional to unlearn them as best as they can and when someone is doing an evaluation, they need to be as objective as possible.
The stigmatisation of tattoos has diminished as they have become increasingly popular. The history of body modification is rich and varied. In the prision setting they can mark a record of the how the individual sees both their incarceration for instance with the quincunx to represent the closed in feel of the cells to a record of crimes committed.
An informative read for example is the collection by Danzig Baldaev. In psychological terms Danzig became an observer an ethnographer of these tattooed individuals.
"The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of Russian convicts."
As Julianna states there may be a potentially damaging tendency to judge by observing tattoos. But the forensic psychologist would have to be aware of their own prejudices in order to combat them.
Well, first of all, there are some past studies which have proven that corellation between body art and crime exists, but also as time passes and the popularity of tattoos increases those number are staring to decrease. Even though forensic psychology is kinda new to me, in my opinion, every good psychologist, investigator would notice every sign/ symbol of the person who seems "suspicious" to them. Let's say there's a knife tattoo on the arm of the person we are investigating, it doesn't have to mean a things but we'll surely have it in mind.
While we are all human and you are correct that we would notice the knife tattooed on the suspect accused of a stabbing, this reminds me of potentially dangerous assumptions made about peoples expressions of art and identity. Specifically, there have been many individuals convicted for crimes where their rap lyrics were used as key evidence in their cases. Prosecutors try to rely on their "intentions" as outlined in their music to pin a case on them. While there is a whole section of scientific literature on this, this article does a good job highlighting the problem https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/rap-lyrics-evidence-is-it-a-crime-rhyme.htm
I don’t think a professional would do that. All legal professions are bound by ethics, and that would be unethical. Having tattoos says something about the person but that doesn’t mean they such a person who be treated differently.
All humans have biases, whether consciously or unconsciously, but it is the job of a professional to unlearn them as best as they can and when someone is doing an evaluation, they need to be as objective as possible.
The stigmatisation of tattoos has diminished as they have become increasingly popular. The history of body modification is rich and varied. In the prision setting they can mark a record of the how the individual sees both their incarceration for instance with the quincunx to represent the closed in feel of the cells to a record of crimes committed.
An informative read for example is the collection by Danzig Baldaev. In psychological terms Danzig became an observer an ethnographer of these tattooed individuals.
"The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of Russian convicts."
As Julianna states there may be a potentially damaging tendency to judge by observing tattoos. But the forensic psychologist would have to be aware of their own prejudices in order to combat them.
Well, first of all, there are some past studies which have proven that corellation between body art and crime exists, but also as time passes and the popularity of tattoos increases those number are staring to decrease. Even though forensic psychology is kinda new to me, in my opinion, every good psychologist, investigator would notice every sign/ symbol of the person who seems "suspicious" to them. Let's say there's a knife tattoo on the arm of the person we are investigating, it doesn't have to mean a things but we'll surely have it in mind.
I don’t think a professional would do that. All legal professions are bound by ethics, and that would be unethical. Having tattoos says something about the person but that doesn’t mean they such a person who be treated differently.