Yeah... because everyone looks better in frontal lighting than natural lighting.
The mug-shot style shots, even though they're using a flash diffuser, are really not as flattering as more muted, natural lighting from higher angles. The mugshot/made-up pics would have less contrast if you were to take their pictures from the same angles and with the same lighting from shot to shot.
Of course, the whole point was to make them look really bad in the before shots... but still... truth in photojournalism...