Susan Burton shows that there is always a way to turn your life around through her work with incarcerated women.
Burton grew up in the Aliso Village Housing Projects in East Los Angeles. Her parents had moved from the South to Los Angeles, but had no idea about the dangers of the city. Living in the projects brought violence and trauma into Burton’s life and by the age of 13, she decided to run away. This was Burton’s first act that ended with her being incarcerated.
“My mom and dad came there fleeing the terror of the South in the late 40’s and they settled into the projects, into a different type of terror and a different type of poverty that they didn’t recognize until they were in it,” said Burton.
As an adult in her 30’s, Burton experienced more trauma as her son was killed by a detective of the Los Angeles Police Department. She began to use drugs and alcohol to escape the pain which started a series of arrests due to drug possession. She spent 20 years of her life going in-and-out of jail.
“I was trying to calm my grief, my anger, my rage and my loss and the drugs got me arrested,” said Burton.
Upon her final release, Burton found a recovery home in Santa Monica. She noticed that in Santa Monica there were more resources to help people recover from drug addiction than in South Los Angeles. She also noticed that drug addiction wasn’t as criminalized. Many of the people she met in Santa Monica were addicted to Opioid drugs, which often come in pill form and didn’t warrant an arrest. The people in Burton’s community were more often addicted to crack cocaine, which was considered illegal.
“It angered me that I was incarcerated so many times and was never offered help like people in other communities,” said Burton. “I took what I learned in Santa Monica and brought it back to South L.A. to offer my community, the women that I knew, a safe place to go after they were released from prison.”
After leaving the recovery home in Santa Monica, Burton went back to South Los Angeles and worked as a live-in caregiver. She saved her money during those years and when her client moved to a senior home, Burton bought herself a home. In 1998, in her very own house, she started a recovery home called, A New Way of Life.
A New Way of Life has grown to five homes in South Los Angeles and has helped over 1,000 women. The re-entry program has also helped over 300 children reunite with their mothers and provides legal help to expunge records and turn their nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors through Proposition 47, which Burton was instrumental in getting passed.
“I didn’t have a choice, it was something that had to be done. It takes $18,000 a year for a woman to live at A New Way of Life. It costs $75,000 a year for us to incarcerate them,” said Burton. “When a woman gets a job, or gets her baby back, when I see them grow in all types of ways and it makes me feel really good. What we do is not only effective, but necessary and needed in our community.”
Burton has been recognized for her efforts through various associations including CNN Heroes, Ebony Power 100, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators and more. She is also nominated for an NAACP Image Award for her book, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, which was published in May of this year. Her book tells her story of repeated incarceration, drug addiction and how she turned her life around. The book has had such great reviews that the California Endowment, Ford Foundation and Omnia Foundation have partnered to print 11,000 of Burton’s book to go inside of jails and prisons.
“I want to make sure that in the whole discussion around mass incarceration that we talk about women. I wrote the book to help women understand how to break the cycle of incarceration and addiction,” said Burton. “My story is like the story of many, many women and they need a hand up. I know that we could create a better approach if there was the political will and the community will to address poverty, homelessness and addiction.”
Becoming Ms. Burton is currently nominated for an NAACP Image Award and Burton is touring the country with it. To find out about book signings near you, visit becomingmsburton.com. For more information about A New Way of Life, visit www.anewwayoflife.org.
