Plastic Surgery For Disfigured Convicts

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31188, 12 October 1966, Page 22

Plastic Surgery For Disfigured Convicts

(N.Z.P.A.Reuter) NEW YORK. An experiment being carried out in New York indicates that disfigured convicts are less likely to return to a life of crime if they receive plastic surgery.

The three-year study, called Surgical and

Social Rehabilitation of Adult Offenders— S.S.R. for short—still

has another year to run. But preliminary findings have already proved promising.

The experiment is being carried out by the New York City Department of Corrections, the Montefiore Hospital, and the Staten Island (New York) Mental Health Society, a private, non-profit group. It had its origins in the 19505, when a doctor at the Montefiore Hospital was asked to perform occasional plastic surgery on convicts at Sing Sing, the New York State prison.

It was hoped that this would help rehabilitate the men, but it was also felt that more study was needed to determine the long-range effects of the operations. The three agencies taking part in the experiment have based their study mainly on former inmates of New York City’s Rikers Island gaol. Among more than 1500 inmates screened, 244 between the ages of 21 and 50 were chosen.

They were divided into two groups—one of 108 men who

were to receive surgery, and the other, consisting of the remaining 136, who would not be operated on but would act as a control group for purposes of comparison. Each of the two groups was then divided into two. Half of them received medical and psychological assistance when they left prison, as well as help to find work. The other half received no such aid. All the groups were of similar racial composition and all the surgery group were operated on immediately after being released from prison. Tattoo Marks The former convicts included men sent to prison for a wide range of crimes, ranging from robbery to narcotics offences and from larcency to sex offences. Their disfigurements were equally varied. They included bitten-off ears, razor slashed faces, battered noses, jutting jaws and needle-scarred arms, the result of narcotics addiction.

Operations were also carried out to remove obscene tattoo marks sometimes self-inflicted, and tattoo marks indicating the convict’s own criminal history. Tattoo marks on the hand indicating membership in underworld gangs, particularly popular in the late 1940 s and 19505, were also obliterated.

The cost of the experiment is being met by a £92,850 grant from the Federal Government, plus assistance from the city authorities. The operations themselves are carried out free of charge at the Montefiore Hospital and at the Morrisiania Hospital. From the data at present available, the research team believes that disfigured former convicts who did not undergo plastic surgery return to prison at a rate 10 per cent higher than those who do. They add a warning, however, that the actual figure may prove higher or lower when all the information is finally tabulated. When the experiment ends the team’s findings are expected to be incorporated in a book which, it is hoped, will provide the basis for an even broader study of the problem of prisoner rehabilitation, a field receiving increasingly wide attention in the United States.