Removing Tattoos From Gang Members

B O S T O N, Oct. 17 -- Two decades after quitting the California gang she created, Christina Ojeda still felt ashamed of the gang insignia she had tattooed on her hand — a butterfly on top of a rose.

In her job as a substitute teacher and when praying at church, Ojeda tried to hide the symbol of her former life with a Band-Aid. “I felt the whole world was looking at me,” she recalls.

But thanks to tattoo-removal programs sponsored by city police departments and county health programs in cities throughout the nation, former gang members like Ojeda can get a clean slate — literally.

Ojeda went to one such program in San Jose, Calif.

“It is now completely gone,” she says.

Now, a new method to remove tattoos might make it easier for former gang members to become more mainstream members of society.

Dr. Tolbert Wilkinson, a plastic surgeon from San Antonio, Texas, says he has improved a method, called infrared coagulation, that can help remove the tattoos most common among gang members because their images are usually not professionally done and are easier to remove. He reported his work at the annual conference of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons meeting in Los Angeles this week.

Programs Widespread Since the mid-1990s, doctors, law enforcement officials and gang members have been participating in tattoo-removal programs in such cities as St. Louis, Phoenix, and West Palm Beach, Fla. While some programs freely offer the removal service, others require community service in exchange for the procedure.

Some have also expanded to allow people who were not gang members but simply have “tattoo regret” to use the service, often for a fee.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tattoos, unless it ties you to a lifestyle that you’re trying to give up,” says Wilkinson, who began a tattoo-removal program using the infrared coagulator in Bandera, Texas, and has since removed tattoos from around 3,000 people.