Billy Brosowske is covered in a painter’s canvas: white hooded Oregon sweatshirt over white jeans, the outfit decorated in a multicolored spatter. He’s got a boxer’s gnarled nose and a brawler’s thick bald dome.

“Yeah, I just came from a job right down the street. It’s easy to shoot over here for a session,” said Brosowske, who was at Dr. Lee B. Daniel’s Aesthetic Surgery Clinic to get a massive swastika removed from his stomach. But after almost a year of tattoo removal, Brosowske is not keen to embark on a new project.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for the stomach today. Maybe we can get started on my hands instead,” Brosowske tells Lyndy Feeley, Daniel’s assistant and lead laser technician on the tattoo removal machine.

Since being released from prison in the last year and a half, Brosowske moved from a halfway house to Sponsors assisted housing to his own home in Eugene. He gets paid to paint at a union job when he’s not developing his own painting business. Every time Brosowske looks in the mirror, though, reminders of captive life still stare back. At a friend’s suggestion last March, he paid a visit to the tattoo removal service.

Brosowske is not alone in his desire for tattoo removal. A 2016 Harris Poll reported that nearly three in 10 Americans has a tattoo. Nearly a quarter of those 96 million people regret ever getting a tattoo. The stigma of tattoos related to a life of crime carry a particular sting, a persistent inked reminder of a life behind bars. Excising this pigmented record is a large step towards alleviating recidivism. And in reducing ex-convicts return to jail, society benefits both socially and financially.

As for almost every need that arises, enterprising agents have stepped up to meet the demand for excising ink. The nonprofit Jails to Jobs lists more than 300 tattoo removal programs in Canada and the U.S. The list isn't comprehensive — the Aesthetic Surgery Clinic is not included.

Sabel Fleshman, certified advanced aesthetician and director of operations at the clinic, said the facility acquired a PicoSure Laser Removal machine in October of 2016 and began advertising tattoo removal the following December and January. The PicoSure is a leap forward from crude past efforts to remove indelible art.

“The laser goes in there and breaks up the ink. The body digests the particles and the tattoo disappears,” Feeley said. “Sometime it only takes a few minutes, but it can be a painful process.”

It also takes time for colored particles to deteriorate after being lasered, so sessions have to be spaced out by six weeks. It takes at least one to two sessions to completely remove tattoos from skin. Body areas with high blood flow, such as the neck and head, are much kinder to the process. Extremities like the hands and feet require several sessions to make a significant difference. The process is impressive, though, as the back of Brosowske’s head bears not a hint of its former art.

The clinic chose to participate in offering free tattoo removal for both military candidates and formerly incarcerated offenders, inspired in part by Eugene's U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken.

“My philosophy in second chances for inmates is modeled after her passion to help reform men and women," Fleshman said. "We choose to show them respect and compassion so that they can actually start over in life.”

According to the court’s website, Aiken has “had a critical role in launching the District of Oregon's Reentry Court," a pilot program for drug offenders, in partnership with a number of government and nonprofit organizations.

An Oregon Department of Corrections 2018 report cites an average of 402 inmates released per month. And at least 95 percent of people incarcerated in state prisons will be released back to their communities, as cited by the nonprofit National Reentry Resource Center. Keeping these people as functioning citizens not only helps their community, but also puts a dent in a massive taxpayer bill.

According to the department of corrections, it costs $108.26 daily to house individual inmates. That’s almost $40,000 dollars annually per inmate. On top of administrative, probationary, health services and other costs for almost 15,000 inmates in the system, it costs taxpayers about $600 million a year to detain people.

Since launching PicoSure laser tattoo removal in 2017, Fleshman isn't certain how many former inmates have been treated at the clinic, but “we are generally booked out three to four weeks for consultations and about the same for treatments,” but the number “is not enough.”

“We’d like to help more people,” Fleshman said. “We cannot do every single request but we’d be happy to accommodate the more extreme or offensive tattoos that prohibit people from getting jobs.”

That’s exactly what free tattoo removal is about: paving the way to productive lives outside of prison walls.

Brosowske spent 24 of his 45 years on this planet incarcerated, serving several stints in prison, including a racially based assault in 2009 and a heroin distribution case in 2015. Seventeen years of that time was in solitary isolation. He reveled in being one of the baddest of the bad, the most violent among violent men.

“My thing was, if I was going to live in that pile of (excrement), at least I would be at the top of it,” he said.

Brosowske used to be covered from head to toe in gang tattoos. Inside prison, the symbols adorning the back of his head, the teardrop under his eye, the “Ride or Die” motto adorning his fingers, even the letters “D-O-N-T S-T-E-P” dancing across his toes, were all protective talismans, a clear demarcation of allegiance amid the endless brutality that erupts among men in cages.

In free society, the tattoos serve a polar effect, freezing him from acceptance and allegiance into a liberated world. This is a big weight to carry in addition to the multitudes of hurdles adjusting to life on the streets.

Brosowske has been on supervised parole since March 3. Every former federal prisoner has to report daily for three years, checking in via an automated system that also lets parolees know if they have to submit a urine analysis that day. He's still trying to figure out how to program reminders on his phone, almost unrecognizable to the devices he used in 1994.

“Time management’s a huge, huge problem. Inside, the only thing you have to worry about is getting up three times a day to eat,” he said.

Crowds are tough, too.

“Multiple years isolated by myself in a bathroom-sized room to being put back out on the streets in society isn’t always easy," Brosowske said. "At the end of this middle school choir concert at the Hult (Center), there’s all these people in the lobby. It’s so hard being in that close to that many people.”

Tattoo removal has made a huge difference in helping ex-prisoners to make this demanding adjustment. Bad Ink: Visible Tattoos and Recidivism is a study conducted by Kaitlyn Harger through the Department of Economics at West Virginia University. Harger “construct(ed) a dataset of demographic, criminal history, survival and tattoo classifications for all inmates released from the Florida Department of Corrections between 2008 and 2010.”

Harger’s study found that ex-offenders without tattoos were able to avoid re-incarceration for an average of almost 3 1/2 years longer than ex-offenders with tattoos.

Brosowske is not removing all of his tattoo art. The sleeves on his arm and his leg are self-applied creative outlets. For Brosowske, painting is a calling.

“I enjoy when I get a little bit of elbow room to create in people’s homes," he said. "I would like to paint more creatively, but there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

Brosowske's actions and words portray a man ready to make a change.

“It’s all about being a little older, being a little wiser. I’m tired of the rotten way,” he said.

Fortunately for him, there are people and programs out there willing to lend a hand. The final outcome, though, is on him.

“I learned how to be man in prison. I learned about things like honor and integrity and keeping to your word," Brosowske said. "I want to transcend that in the work that I do on the outside. And I want to be an example to those men coming up behind me that they can get out of that life and turn their lives around for good.”