Bizarre database

Just finished attending a software user conference, this morning I saw "User Presentation" where an organization describes an application they built. It was a good demo of using a Java and Web front end to assorted backend data bases. The organization is a state law enforcement agency. In the demo they showed us one of their database tables that enumerates "Tattoos, Marks and Scars" from descriptions by crime victims. It turns out they have specific database encodings for many of them, and they can catch bad guys based on distinct/unique tattoos. That was pretty strange.