(horses trotting) (horn blowing) (bell dinging) - [Narrator] In 1896, a photographer named Clara Sheldon Smith opened a studio in the Gold Rush town of Marysville, California.

She photographed local events, people at work, and made formal portraits.

In 1900, Smith was hired by the town to photograph everyone arrested there.

(gentle music) Over the next eight years, hundreds of people from all walks of life and accused of all sorts of crimes were taken from the jail to her studio to have their pictures taken.

The portraits she made of them were not like any mugshots taken in America.

(gentle music) - [Reginald Dwayne Betts] One of the things that people actually are afraid to ask folks is why people commit crimes and I think one of the reasons why they're afraid is because people commit crimes for a whole lot of reasons.

If you pushed me to say, why do people commit crimes, I would say that they're living in environments with intense emotional challenges that aren't being addressed, and you make mistakes and you have these moments where you fall asleep in the dream of your enemy.

I don't think anybody grows up in the world and says, "What is the most effective way for me to hurt somebody else?"

(gentle music)