#Susan burton rehab santa monica how to

'And we talked and I told her I was ashamed and she explained to me that she understands that life happens, but to stay connected, so that when things are going on you have people you can reach out to,' says Archie. Ingrid Archie in an ad for one of the many services offered by the A New Way of Life Re-entry Project (Courtesy of A New Way of Life Re-entry Project) When Archie called to her confirm her spot, Burton answered the phone. She wrote anonymously from prison, hoping to conceal her identify as long as possible. When Archie landed back in prison not long after completing a stint at A New Way of Life, she hesitated to reach out to Susan Burton again. “(Burton) came and got me from that bus station and brought me to A New Way of Life,” says Archie. 'She was the first face I saw when I came home,' says Ingrid Archie, a resident and community organizer at A New Way of Life. It's that unwaveringly firm yet supportive tone that's helped guide scores of women back on track. “Well, sometimes I keep them because after a woman comes, and she doesn't want to respond to the program, sometimes I go back and get the letter and I'll say, 'Do you remember writing this letter?' ” Burton asks with a firm tone as if the woman were in the room. Susan Burton in her modest but always buzzing office at A New Way of Life's Compton-area headquarters.

#Susan burton rehab santa monica how to

I ask her why.īurton seems a little unsure how to answer at first. Women might stay at A New Way of Life for just a few months or for a couple of years. A couple of former clients have even gone to replicate the New Way of Life model in other parts of Southern California where such resources are hard to come by.īurton doesn’t have an exact count of how many have come through the doors - close to 1,000, she thinks - but she does keep the letters sent from behind prison walls, hundreds of them neatly filed in enormous cabinet drawers. (Courtesy of A New Way of Life Re-entry Project) “We let them cook for maybe the first time in a long, long time,” says Burton. 'You don't get to smell the fresh fruit in the grocery store (in prison), all of these things you've known that you don't get.' Susan Burton (R) with a client at one of the Los Angeles-area transitional homes operated by A New Way of Life. But there’s also attention to the little things.

There’s help with the big stuff you’d expect, like family reunification, job referrals, drug rehab. 'All women who've been incarcerated and just needed a place to rebuild their lives.'Ī New Way of Life now includes five transitional homes and a constellation of other services. “I slept in the dining room and I put beds in the other three bedrooms, so there were 11 of us in that house and it created a community of women helping women,” says Burton. She named it A New Way of Life: a shelter, a waystation for women exiting prison. Why do they go to treatment and I get chains?'ĭetermined to not let other women in similar circumstances fall through the cracks, Burton scraped together what little savings she had - and swung open the doors of her own home in South L.A. 'And people in Santa Monica wasn't going to prison for what we were going to prison for in South L.A. 'When I went there were all of these services,” recalls Burton. But she did find it about 25 miles away, near the Pacific Ocean in the much more affluent city of Santa Monica. When Burton was released from prison, she says she couldn’t find the help she needed in her own community of South Central L.A. area (Courtesy of A New Way of Life Re-entry Project)

A New Way of Life sponsors regular workshops, forums and legal clinics each month in the L.A. Susan Burton (L) at a recent criminal justice reform event. It’s a question that would her set her off on a 20-year criminal justice crusade to help hundreds of other women just like her.

'Why isn't there a therapist that I could've went to, to resolve my grief and my pain and my suffering?' asks Burton.