For most of a decade, a small army of judges, public defenders, legal aid attorneys and volunteers has been assembling in Tucson once a year to do something unusual: hand people their lives back, in a single morning, for free.
The event is the Fresh Start Expo, and on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026, it runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at a new location — Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona, 1940 E. Silverlake Road. There is no ticket, no fee and no capacity limit. Walk in, and you can walk out with a bench warrant quashed, your voting rights restored, or a marijuana expungement petition filed.
The expo is a partnership between Fresh Start International and the Pima County Attorney's Office, with representatives from the county attorney's office, Pima County Justice Court, Southern Arizona Legal Aid and other legal organizations on hand to help. Attendees can also get free background checks and information about restoring their rights. Beyond the legal tables, the event connects people with housing, health care, education, employment, addiction recovery and behavioral health resources. Free clothing and haircuts are part of the deal, and families are welcome — the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona provides childcare while parents work through paperwork and services.
The origins of the expo trace to a Tucson pastor named Dr. Da'Mond Holt, who founded Fresh Start International, a faith-based nonprofit that works with at-risk youth caught in the school-to-prison pipeline as well as adults returning from incarceration. Holt's vision was a one-stop shop: rather than sending people to a dozen different offices across the county, bring the offices to them.
"Fresh Start Expo is what I consider the ultimate one-stop shop for justice-impacted communities," Holt told Tucson Spotlight.
Since its early years, according to the Pima County Attorney's Office, thousands of people have received services and assistance through the event. Past expos have filled the Tucson Convention Center with tables and, for a day, working courtrooms.
That growth reflects the scale of the need. Arizona law makes it difficult for people with criminal records to fully rejoin civic life. Voting rights are automatically restored after the completion of a sentence — including prison, probation and parole — only for first-time, nonviolent felony convictions; anyone with more than one felony conviction must petition the court. A marijuana conviction, meanwhile, can be expunged under Proposition 207, the 2020 ballot measure that legalized recreational cannabis in Arizona. The expungement provision took effect July 12, 2021, and allows people convicted of possession, consumption, transportation or cultivation of marijuana, or of marijuana paraphernalia, to petition to have their arrest, charge, conviction, adjudication and sentence records erased. The catch is that the process requires filing a petition with the court — exactly the kind of procedural hurdle that keeps eligible people from ever getting relief.
At the expo, that hurdle shrinks. Judges from Tucson City Court and Pima County Superior Court have set up shop at past events to hear cases and quash warrants on the spot, while legal teams help attendees complete applications to restore civil rights or seal records. Some participants have had their rights restored the same day.
Holt has argued that the event is as much about public safety as it is about individual second chances. "A lot of the time, people think public safety is always about putting a thousand police officers on the street," he told Tucson Spotlight. "That's one side of it, but the other side of it is what you're going to do with the population that completes their sentence."
The practical case is easy to make. Unemployment among people released from prison often hovers around 27 percent, and a criminal record can block housing, jobs and professional licensing long after a sentence ends. The expo's answer is to pair legal relief with the things that make it usable — a felony-friendly job fair, help making doctor and dental appointments through El Rio, behavioral health and addiction treatment referrals, and the small dignities of a fresh haircut and clean clothes.
The event has also drawn people whose own lives illustrate its purpose. At a past expo, attendee Buck Myhre, then in a 30-day residential program, described what the day meant to him. "It gives me goosebumps," he said. "There's a lot of people who look down on us, and it's really hard when people are looking down on us. So I'm really happy to be here and to get the opportunity to leave the facility and get this done."
The phrase organizers use for the day is that mistakes should be a life lesson, not a life sentence.
This year's move to Goodwill Industries of Southern Arizona on East Silverlake Road marks a change of venue from the downtown convention center, but the format holds: show up, no appointment, no cost, and leave with less weighing you down than you arrived with. The expo runs 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17.