Tattoo and punishment, social punishment?

Through the study of history and civilization, one finds many traces of tattooing as punishment , as a means of social tagging . Tattooing and forced punitive aims mostly to identify and exclude the individual from society permanently designating the congeners.

During World War II, the Nazis established a watermarking system for Jews and other prisoners of the concentration camp and extermination 'of Auschwitz (eg Gypsies were tattooed with the letter "Z" for "Zigeuner "Aryans of the letter" A "). Upon entry of prisoners in the camps, the SS their imprinted a serial number tattooed on the inside of the wrist , which became their sole identity, like cattle in a process of dehumanization .

Those who were not marked by this tattoo on their arrival were sentenced to immediate execution. This marking was seen as a humiliation by the deportees . However, many survivors of the concentration camps who kept this brand as evidence of their survival as a witness to this horror , in honor of the missing. Others have chosen to remove the mark to erase the stigma , shame and humiliation suffered during this period. The word ka-tzetnik is the name of this tattoo of shame and means Yiddish deportees camps.

Upon release , there has been a real wave treatment , which affected nearly 10,000 people, especially many of women that have been mowed , the shaved head and a swastika painted tar on the front for had sexual relations with German (the "horizontal collaboration") or for making proof collaborative economic with the enemy, the evidence that limiting often denunciations. Sometimes we went to the scarify or tattoo a swastika on their skull , or even outright public lynchings.

According to the University of Washington in Japan during the Edo period (the former name of Tokyo), which began around 1603 with the takeover of Ieyasu Tokugawa (Battle of Sekigahara) and ends around 1868 with the Meiji Restoration, there are also cases of tattoos symbolizing a Social tagging : the prostitutes used the example to more easily attract their customers. Tattooing criminals was an official punishment this time, at least until 1720, when it was replaced by the amputation of the nose and ears. Tattooing criminals , however, continued until 1870, and was abolished by the Meiji government of the Japanese Emperor. This punishment was visible tattoo has created a large population of outlaws, forced into exile and having nowhere to go, largely made ​​up of samurai warriors (Ronin). Found through self-structuring of these gangs of outlaws the origin of organized crime in modern Japan and the yakuza , the criminal tattoos very present, marking has become identity at home.

Other known examples of tattoos and punitive forced:

- In the Roman empire, slaves were also tattooed , as thieves, criminals and heretics. This custom dates from the Emperor Constantine, who had décrté criminals for games of cirsque should be tattooed on the legs and hands, but never on the face. This reflects the rise of Christianity in the empire. The man's face was created in the image of God, we could not scarify.

- If the Persians reserved tattoo notables in their customs, Greeks , with whom they were at war, this practice accordingly reserved to their prisoners . The tattoo Greek slaves was a nice and was most often tattooed on the forehead to prevent concealment. Plato will set itself a principle of making a tattoo mark sacrilege