Rick Poynor on the Russ­ian prison tat­too flash art of Danzig Bal­daev on show in Lon­don along with pho­tographs of tat­tooed pris­on­ers by Sergei Vasiliev:

“Many of the tat­toos are grotesque, sex­u­al­ly explic­it and obscene. Politi­cians receive a sav­age satir­i­cal bat­ter­ing. Skulls are every­where. In the books, the draw­ings — often rem­i­nis­cent of Robert Crumb’s — are most­ly pre­sent­ed one to a page. We now see that Bal­daev, using visu­al notes he made while doing his job, would lat­er work up sev­er­al fin­ished draw­ings on one sheet, show­ing sim­i­lar types of tat­too. These are sur­round­ed by rub­ber stamps con­sist­ing of his name and a fil­ing num­ber, often whit­ed out lat­er, and replaced by a new num­ber in pen­cil.” Design Observ­er

See also:
Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Tat­too Ency­clopae­dia Vol­ume I
Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Tat­too Ency­clo­pe­dia Vol­ume II
Russ­ian Crim­i­nal Tat­too Ency­clopae­dia Vol­ume III