Psychology and Justice - Plastic Surgery for Criminals? (Part 2)

Well, if attractiveness is such an important factor, I mean, we've heard a lot in the last episode, attractive babies taken care by nurses and misbehaving children mildly judged by observers if they were really good looking. And we've heard about advantages of job applicants in job interviews. So if attractiveness is such an important factor, wouldn't it be helpful to change the look of criminals? I mean, with plastic surgery, for example, just change how they look like. I mean, why not? Well, okay, you're right, we can't do that. It's not ethical to say, well, you have a big nose or there is a evil looking scar in your face. So we can't do that. But wait, hey, it's been done and it's been done several times. I'm not joking, there have been some studies on this topic because scientists said, well, if we change the looks of a really evil looking criminal, maybe this improves, first of all, his self-image because if he looks in the mirror, he sees somebody else and probably it's gonna change image other people have of him. So if they see a better looking person, the halo effect might be at work. And therefore, finally, there might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The persons around him have a better image of him and as time goes by, he adapts to this image. The studies that have been done on this topic have shown mixed results. There are some interesting positive results and there are some studies in which no results have been observed. But of course, there are also some methodological issues. Well, let's take a look at a better done study that's been published in 1988 by Friedman, Warren, Cunningham and Blackwell. The title of their study was Cosmetic Surgery and Criminal Rehabilitation. 253 inmates of the Texas State Prison were given the chance to change their looks with the help of plastic surgery. They were given the chance to change scars, to change their nose, their ears, or for example, to have a facelift. What the scientists really wanted to know was how is this group of prisoners going to behave when they are released from prison? So they were interested in the so-called recidivism rates. Are they going to commit a crime again or are they going to be less criminal? And therefore, they compared the recidivism rate of this group with the usual recidivism rate, which was 14% after year one, 32% after year two, and about 36% after the third year. In comparison, in the group of the cosmetically improved ex-criminals, the recidivism rate was just 8% in comparison, as I said, to 14% in the control group after year one, 17% after year two in comparison to 32, and 25% after year three, which is still better than 36% in the normal prisoner group. The biggest effect could be observed for the group of criminals that had been imprisoned because of violent crimes. In this group, the plastic surgery seemed to have a really huge effect, which was after year one, there were just 3.3% that committed a crime again, and after year two, there's been just 1.4 of the usual number of criminals that committed a crime again. And after year three, still less than half of the usual number of criminals were sentenced again. So might this be better than the usual rehabilitation methods? We just change their looks and now they're better people? Well, this is probably a too simplistic approach. It might be helpful, especially in cases of severe disfiguring scars. Someone might have to suffer from for his whole lifetime, but for more average looking prisoners, this might not be the best intervention. And on the other hand, as I said, there are some methodological issues with this study. For example, there was no randomized assignment of the participants to the experimental conditions. And without randomization, we don't know whether the plastic surgery group were just the inmates of the prison that were more willing to change. I mean, if you are going to change your looks by plastic surgery, you must be very motivated. And so they might have been more motivated to not only change their looks, but also to change their lives. Additionally, we don't know whether the criminals really changed their behavior, or if you think back to the first studies we've been talking about, or whether the judges were blended, were influenced by the better looks, and as a result, just sentenced more mildly.