The Man in the Mirror

Mar 15
An Inmate From The Joliet Correctional Center Shows A Battered Nose (At Left) And, Two Years Later, The Results Of His Cosmetic Surgery
An Inmate From The Joliet Correctional Center Shows A Battered Nose (At Left) And, Two Years Later, The Results Of His Cosmetic Surgery

Dr. Michael Lewin, born in Poland in 1909, was encouraged by his uncle to go into the field of cosmetic surgery. At age 25, he moved from Poland to the United States. That was in 1934. A few weeks after arriving, he joined the house staff at Beth Israel hospital in New York, but by the time he was ready to pursue a private practice, World War II had overcome the U.S. medical field. Lewin became a Major in the Medical Corps and served dutifully until the war was over.

Following, his list of accomplishments and titles would be extensive: founder, chief, director, sometimes all three. Post-war, he could do as he pleased. But among all his responsibilities to this professional work, he pursued a number of special projects in reconstructive surgery. One of those normally would have become a footnote in his career; when Lewin passed away, he was actively a member of 23 separate medical societies and the aforementioned list could fill volumes. But in 1963, he had decided to take up the mantle for a social idea: If we physically altered the look of inmates, would that change their futures?

Lewin’s contributions extended the many working through this concept between the ’50s and ’60s. Oakalla Prison, the Haney Young Offenders Correctional Unit, the Kingston Penitentiary in Canada, the Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas, the Camp Hill Borstal in England. Doctors and scientists wanted to know if there was a correlation between physical alterations and whether or not they would end up back in prison.

These programs were designed to reduce rates of recidivism, operating under the notion that a changed face could lead to a changed character.

Sharrona Pearl, Change Your Face, Change Your Life? Prison Plastic Surgery as a Way to Reduce Recidivism

Lewin and two other doctors conceived of a collaboration between Montifiore Hospital and Sing-Sing Prison that would become one of the most notable. Lewin, serving as principal investigator, led the cosmetic surgery portion for the Surgical and Social Rehabilitation of Adult Offenders program. The program, funded to the tune of $250,000 by “the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration, a branch of the now dissolved U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, … commenced July 1, 1964 on what would become the first federally funded scientific project to determine if plastic surgery truly affected recidivism in prison inmates” (Jack West, “Plastic Makes Perfect”).

Jospeh Coletti, an inmate at Stateville Correctional Center in 1955, had a chin implant at age 24. He was imprisoned for larceny. The original caption read: “The commonest facial deformity at Stateville is a receding chin. This one was improved in 88 days.”

Fifteen hundred inmates applied, 450 were accepted. The average inmate requesting surgery had been previously incarcerated six or more times and had a ninth-grade education. Four-hundred forty-three men — excluding the seven women who were accepted but isolated for gender control — were assigned to one of four treatment groups:

  1. One group received only surgery but were not provided with vocational training
  2. The second group received a combination of surgery and social-vocational services
  3. The third group received only social-vocational services
  4. The final group received neither

West wrote that “many patients were more than satisfied with post-operative scars as opposed to carrying the stigma of their previous lives.” They would go on to find that the type of deformity and the correction correlated to specific criminal behaviors. Heroin addicts had their track marks covered. Tattoos featuring gang or Nazi affiliations were removed, and those with tattoos were most correlated to burglary crimes. Rhinoplasty was related to thievery, facial scars with assault.

I’m nearly positive you wouldn’t be able to do this today. But the success was astounding:

  • For non-addicts, the overall recidivism rate was 32% compared to 68% for those that did not receive surgery.
  • 89% of non-addicts that received vocational services alone recidivated compared to 30% that received surgery alone, 33% that received surgery and services, and 56% for those that received neither.

Notably, the one thing Lewin admitted they couldn’t do much for was addiction, the reason they separated out the non-addicts in the results above. He was quoted in the New York Times: “We don’t do as well with addicts because they have a compulsion we can’t do anything for.”

A 36-point decrease in going back to prison because someone physically altered their body. It makes one wonder how much physically altering yourself could affect other areas of life.

For more, Zara Stone wrote a book about this called Killer Looks.