SITTING in a Mexican prison’s library, murder convict David Guzman tattooed a skull on a leather patch for a designer handbag to be sold in a luxury shop.

    Guzman, 34, took drugs and stole at a young age, falling into a “nefarious” world that landed him in prison, but five years into his murder sentence, he appeared at peace as he drew the skeletal figure.

    His work is part of a rehabilitation project called Prison Art, which pays inmates to draw designs for purses that sell for US$400 at high-end stores in Mexico City and other towns.

    Guzman lobbied to bring the project to the Tulancingo prison, in central Hidalgo state, where several other inmates use makeshift tattoo ink needles to paint birds, butterflies, tigers and, especially, skulls on leather patches.

    “My stubbornness was due to my need to care for two children,” the slim convict said as he sat with a dozen male and female inmates making designs in the prison library.

    The prisoners, young and old, usually work on their bunk beds in dormitories that hold up to 100 people, or sitting on plastic containers in communal spaces in a prison ranked fifth worst for overcrowding and insalubrity by the National Human Rights Commission.

    They use homemade tattooing equipment made out of a pen, a needle and little motor powered by a cellphone charger. The inmates use the same apparatus to tattoo their skin, despite the health risks.

    “This makes the days shorter. I don’t even know what time it is,” said Ezequiel Perez, a 24-year-old whose muscular arms are covered in tattoos.(SD-Agencies)