Sun, Jul 06, 2008
 Reflected sunlight casts a glow on the face of Stephen Faircloth as he reads along during a poetry workshop at the UA.
Greg Bryan / Arizona Daily Star
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Thursday evening, the sun's last shafts enter a second-floor room at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. A small knot of writers sits at a table to read their words and hear others' critiques.
Stephen Faircloth, who writes poetry, is at the table. It's his second time at this dream table.
The airiness and the brightness of the room in this newly built, non-red-brick UA building on East Helen Street is in sharp contrast to the barbed-wire-enclosed, drab institutional barracks Faircloth where lived in for 20 months.
He was an inmate at the Arizona State Prison Complex on South Wilmot Road in southeast Tucson, one of 10 state prisons around Arizona that currently house 38,697 men and women.
In prison, Faircloth found writing to temporarily escape the daily ugliness inside the yard.
Sitting at the poetry table with published poets and eager writers, the 57-year-old Faircloth said it marks a "re-entry milestone." He measures his daily life with each marker he reaches since he walked out of prison on April 10.
He has a job and the support of friends who visited him in prison. He petted a puppy, rode a bike and held a baby. He chewed gum, walked the well-stocked aisles of a grocery store and talked with an elderly woman whom he did not know.
"It's these little things that are seemingly insignificant, and you forget them while you focus on the big things," he said about one of several key lessons he learned in prison.
Mike Lyons knows exactly what Faircloth is experiencing. In early January, Lyons left the state prison complex in southeast Tucson after eight months.
Every step forward, from getting a job to buying insurance to finding an apartment, is one step farther away from his prison past, said Lyons, 42, who works at a cabinet shop.
Lyons was sentenced to one year for driving under the influence while on probation from a previous assault charge.
Faircloth was given a two-year sentence for misconduct with a weapon, which violated his probation from a previous drug charge.
Faircloth, who lives in a half-way house, is on minimum parole. Lyons completed his 30-day parole in February.
Prison life gave both men new perspectives on life, they said during separate interviews. I talked to Faircloth, who transports medical patients, at a coffee house near the university. I found Lyons at work.
But the odds are steep for ex-prisoners to stay out of prison.
More than 16 percent of former Arizona prisoners returned to prison within two years of their release, and nearly 25.5 percent were back in prison within three years, said a 2005 study by the state Department of Corrections. The department followed the release of nearly 55,000 prisoners who were released from 1990 to 1999.
Still, both men feel confident that they will succeed outside prison's confines.
Their determined outlook comes from having participated in weekend prison workshops. Tucson-area volunteers with the Alternatives to Violence Project go to the state prison one weekend a month to talk.
Last October, I met Faircloth and Lyons during a weekend Alternatives to Violence session in which I took part.
What really happens during the weekend workshops is that insiders and outsiders learn to listen to one another. They share their concerns, happiness, worries and successes.
The nurturing and friendship created in the workshops have carried Lyons and Faircloth away from the fences, the rigid routines and the prison guards.
They're free now to make new decisions and regain their integrity. They share a similar goal.
Lyons and Faircloth want to counsel men who leave prison. They want to give back and become involved in the community they now call theirs.
"I want to do the right thing," Faircloth said.
Said Lyons: "It's not what we do during work. It's what we do after work."
● Reporter Ernesto "Neto" Portillo Jr. has deep roots here. His maternal grandparents came to Tucson in 1931. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Argentine-born Onofre Navarro, lived in Tucson beginning in the 1860s. Portillo can be contacted at 573-4242 or eportillo@azstarnet.com.
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