Science historian sharona pearl is interested in faces. She's researched physiognomy. Which is the study of facial features in their relationship to character. She's written about face transplants. She teaches at drexel university in philadelphia and she was working on a new book about face recognition. She was tracking down stories of people trying to avoid law enforcement taking drastic steps to change their appearance. Everything from people trying to dodge modern face recognition software to a famous british train robber ronnie biggs who got plastic surgery in order to evade the authorities after his massive train. Theft as she got deeper into this kind of research looking for more examples of people changing their faces using search terms like criminals and plastic surgery. She stumbled upon something else entirely. This whole other world turns up what she found. Blew her mind. All of these studies written from the nineteen fifties throws late as the one thousand nine hundred eighty s about programs in prison that gave people plastic surgery as a mechanism to lower rates of recidivism. That's right plastic surgery for prisoners nose jobs ears pinned chisel jolla lines tattoo removal all sorts of cosmetic procedures in an effort to give people a chance at a better life. Somehow if there looks were changed they would be less inclined to commit crimes and return to prison after they were released and this went on until about thirty years ago.