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The handbook, which was posted on Public Intelligence’s website, provides photos and descriptions of tattoos associated with gangs and criminal groups.

Travis O’Brien, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said the report “was not officially released by the CBSA.

“To provide a fulsome response, we will require appropriate time to review and address,”he said in an email to Postmedia News.

According to the handbook, a three-dot tattoo formed in a triangle could symbolize “prison, hospital, cemetery,” which represents “the path and ultimate end of a gang lifestyle,” it said. The three dots also could mean “a crazy life” (“mi vida loca”) which is associated with the Mexican Mafia.

This tattoo is usually the first an individual receives before becoming a full-fledged gang member.

However, the handbook recognized that simply having a tattoo does not mean an individual is involved in crime.

“Someone who tattoos himself may not necessarily be a gang member; however, he is at the very least indicating that he feels he runs outside the norms of society, that he is a rebel,”the agency wrote in the handbook’s section on Asian gang tattoos.

“Tattooing is not uncommon, nor generally done by the average citizen in Asian culture,” it said, because it is seen as a “defilement” of the body.

Asian gangs in Hong Kong usually depict animals such as snakes, dragons and tigers, according to the handbook.

Meanwhile, three Ottawa tattoo parlours, which have been in business for at least a decade or more, said they hadn’t seen any customers requesting gang tattoos.