Monday, Dec. 08, 1980
Fresh Faces
Help for homely cons
"I've always been ugly," said a Florida prisoner serving a life sentence for murder in a letter to Surgeon Edwin Joy. 'That, added to some psychological problems, made me antisocial. I wanted to socialize, but who wants an ugly guy around?" 'His hope: surgery that would help the convict, 31, improve his self-image and perhaps reform him.
The operation, which Joy intends to do, would not be the first performed on a prisoner; at least 40 inmates in the South have sought a new outlook on life from Joy, head of the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Joy's mentor, Surgeon Elmer Bear of the Medical College of Virginia, began reshaping prisoners' mugs 20 years ago, and has done about 25 such operations all told.
What has sparked renewed interest in these procedures is growing evidence that they can indeed alter behavior. Originally, the goals were modest: the relief of pain caused by a misaligned Dick Tracy jaw, for example, or the treatment of constant drooling by a deformed inmate who could not close his mouth. But as Bear and Joy told a conference of their colleagues in San Francisco, these operations often pay dividends for society. Joy points with pride to a once unpopular prisoner at Virginia State Penitentiary, an antisocial murderer who, after surgery to correct a grossly protruding jaw, finally won the friendship of fellow inmates.
Joy does not promise to turn a felon into a bank president. In any case, a more informed judgment on facial surgery's potential for changing personality probably must await release of a study now under way at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Meantime, prisoners continue to apply for surgical work that may cost taxpayers $2,000 to $4,000. But even at that, it may be the cheapest rehabilitation program going.
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