I know that State and Feds have catalogued tattoos for decades, they have been used inside the Fed Corrections dept, states too, for tracking gang affiliations. I know for sure that computers have been used with , primitive as it may be, to identify and associate any/all people with certain tattoos with the most aggressive in jail gangs. Those gangs are not contained by the walls and have long been very well established in the communities all over the country.
Sharing data has never been a strong point of any Fed or State dept or agency. I only know of the policies on cataloguing tattoos by all police depts and by all correctional institutions upon arrest or admissions. It is another basic part of 'entering the system" and has been for longer than the 8 decades i have been alive.
Computers and software make all kinds of applications of all this data simply a matter of what, when , and how. I am guessing, but tattoos may have been recorded or compiled as long or longer than fingerprints.
just 2
John