Tattoo removal service offers a fresh start

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This article was published 08/07/2024 (648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A tattoo removal service that helps give inmates a fresh start is expanding its reach into the Manitoba Youth Detention Centre.

Mother Ink, a tattoo removal business which offers its services to men serving time in the Headingly jail, will start making weekly trips to the youth centre in Winnipeg later this month.

Della Steinke, owner of the removal service, Mother Ink, told the Sun that she’ll also offer tattoo removal to women in Headingly, starting this month.

“The younger that we can help these people, the better off it is,” Steinke said.

Often people want to make changes to their life after they get out of jail, Steinke said, but tattoos, especially gang tattoos, can threaten those efforts and even sometimes the person’s own safety.

“They’re going to have a better chance without those face tattoos — getting a job, getting housing, everything,” she said. “So, it’s really a huge change of life for them.”

Steinke said starting the tattoo removal process while people are still in custody helps give them a head start on rebuilding their life once released.

The 53-year-old, who described herself as “covered from my ears right down to the tips of my toes,” in tattoos, got involved in tattoo removal after her son had a car accident that left him a quadriplegic at 17. Steinke quit her desk job to help with his recovery — which included 23 surgeries, the use a wheelchair, and involved learning to walk and drive again.

“He lost use of one of his arms … he’s out of wheelchair, he can walk, he drives, but that took a lot of healing and everything else,” she said. “After the accident, I had planned (and) had always made a promise that I would always continue to pay it forward.”

Steinke was working at a halfway house and noticed that some inmates staying there had left their gang while in prison, but they worried they’d get jumped once they got out.

She learned how to do laser tattoo removal, which works by using heat to break up the ink into tiny pieces that are then cleared away by the immune system. Combining her interest in ink with a need she saw through her job, Steinke began offering tattoo removal at the halfway house.

When parole officers and probation officers heard about her work, they asked Steinke if she could remove tattoos for their clients too.

For eight years, Steinke continued her work, covering expenses out of her own pocket — even taking out a loan to buy her tattoo removal machine — and working midnight shifts so that she could remove tattoos during the day.

She had an opportunity to visit jails to tell inmates about her services, then she was finally able to get permission to bring her equipment into jail during her visits and work on removing inmates’ tattoos, free of charge, while they were in custody.

Funding from the province allowed her to open her own shop on Sargent Avenue in Winnipeg where she can have the space to help her clients not only with tattoo removal but with whatever they need for a fresh start.

“It’s always been more than just tattoo removal,” she said. “It’s always been about mentoring them and seeing if I could help them get housing, or jobs or anything like that, or if they just needed a few dollars (when) they were out diapers for the kids.”

Steinke said she’s gone from seeing 10 to 15 people a week to 10 to 15 people a day. Once not allowed to do her work in jails, she now works in three of them. One sign of her success is that clients who began having their tattoos removed in jail are committing to having the work complete once they’re freed.

“Everybody that’s being released that we’ve already started working on is continuing their treatments here in the office,” she said.

Word of the program has also spread to a courtroom in Brandon, where recently during sentencing for a 17-year-old offender, a judge granted the youth “open custody” in the community so he could take advantage of his interest in using Mother Ink tattoo removal program.

“Is taking those tattoos away one way of leaving that life behind?” the judge asked the youth at the hearing.

The youth nodded. “Well, I think that’s a good plan,” the judge replied.

Meanwhile, Steinke has plans to continue to expand her services across the province and wants to expand into the federal prison system. She also plans to take her tattoo removal on the road soon alongside her younger sister, Andrea Nagasaka, who manages Mother Ink’s office and Steinke’s schedule. After speaking with many chiefs, Steinke said she plans to travel—and live— in a van she’ll drive to First Nations in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario where she’ll help remove gang tattoos.

Not only does she get to experience how grateful her clients are that they can finally stop covering up a tattoo on a beach, or look in the mirror without being reminded of their troubled past, Steinke said her work also saves taxpayers money by supporting former offenders’ rehabilitation.

Whether it’s a girl whose former boyfriend was in a gang, a 14-year-old girl who was sold into the sex trade and has a tattoo marking who owns her, or a 73-year-old man who was in a prison camp, Steinke says that she’ll help with any kind of tattoo.

“If they have some sort of trauma with the tattoo,” Steinke said. “Or it’s just going to stop them from getting a job or anything else, I’ll help all of them as well.”

She also said that her clients are part of her family, that she knows their children, their wives, and their stories.

“If I can have that trust with them, and they can have that trust with me, then hopefully we can change a few lives,” Steinke said. “And hopefully, it will save money without half of these people going back to jail.”

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

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