Randarkman posted:

That link to the publisher's website with some of the pictures from the book actually mentions in alot of cases who had the tattoo and what they know about that person's history (though often enough you're looking just at records, because these tattoos were recorded at the morgue when the person died).
Alot of repeat offenders, many had been in juvenile institutions before going into correctional labor (many of these seem to be from the gulags and there's a connection to that earlier series mentioned that the author did of "pictures from the gulags"), many were arrested for homelessness (particularly the women), several were the children of people who had been in the gulags or been executed during the 30s and 40s. If you weren't a hardened criminal before you entered the prison system you would probably become one (not unlike many other prison systems), a common refarin seems to be "only death/a bullet will reform me".