THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020 AR 13Dana Moore arrived in February as inmate
No. WG4763 at the California Institution for
Women east of Los Angeles, to complete her
sentence of two years and eight months for
possession of a firearm. The coronavirus
numbers in the state’s prison system were
climbing — a grave concern to Ms. Moore,
who is immunocompromised.
But last month, she grew teary as the pris-
on gate rolled up. She was being released
early, and carried out a cardboard box with
her belongings into the waiting car of Susan
Burton, the activist who was helping her
leave behind the gun towers, the barbed wire
and her anonymous prisoner ID for an
eggnog-yellow bungalow on a quiet street in
Los Angeles.
Once there, Ms. Moore made a beeline for
the biggest mattress, “like sleeping on a soft
pillow,” she said. She began negotiating the
personalities of her new housemates — all
former inmates — and relishing her new-
found privacy in her new setting: a home de-
voted to healing.
It was the ninth residence created by Ms.
Burton for A New Way of Life Reentry
Project, a pioneering network of shelter and
support programs she created for vulnera-
ble women coming out of prison that some
have likened to a modern-day underground
railroad. An activist and writer, as well as a
former inmate, she became a formidable
force in creating safe houses for women 22
years ago, when she scraped together sav-
ings and some bunk beds from Ikea to create
A New Way of Life.
The homes, which average seven women,
are designed to be intimate — and a far cry
from prison — with matching bedspreads
and curtains, granite kitchen countertops
and inspirational Post-it messages (like “Al-
ways Wear an Invisible Crown”) on the bath-
room mirrors. They are the kind of refuge
Ms. Burton wished she had had when she
stepped off the Greyhound bus in downtown
Los Angeles after her first stint in jail for
prostitution — “an atmosphere that’s bright,
cheerful and motivating and that says, ‘You
are worthy,’ ” she said.
Ms. Burton’s can-do approach — born
from her own life circumstances — has gar-
nered widespread recognition: she has been
a Top 10 CNN Hero, a Soros Justice fellow
and the subject of the short documentary
film, “Susan.” Now the pandemic is provid-
ing Ms. Burton’s life’s work with a new sense
of urgency. Prisons and jails have become
hothouses for the virus, with 47 deaths and
8,000 cases in California alone, according to
recent statistics from the California Depart-
ment of Prisons and Rehabilitation.
“It takes cruel and unusual punishment to
the extreme,” she said. To reduce overcrowd-
ing, thousands of inmates like Ms. Moore are
being released early, a move underscored
last week by a federal judge who ordered the
state to set aside space for isolation and
quarantine in California prisons.
Ms. Burton and her cohorts are working
overtime to house as many newly released
women as they can. The yellow bungalow
was pulled together in a record 10 days, with
much of the furniture coming from a Target
gift registry. Ms. Burton is in the midst of
readying a 1960s convent outside Los Ange-
les, leased to the organization for $1 by the
Society of St. Vincent de Paul, with a squad-
ron of decorators set to volunteer. Such sup-
port is not atypical: Ms. Burton’s persua-
siveness and fierce sense of purpose draws
people in.
As much of a weary America staggered
into Month 4 of sheltering in place, the wom-
en ensconced in the project’s houses in Los
Angeles and Long Beach savored a sense of
gratitude and relief. It had been months, per-
haps years, since they had felt the chill of an
open refrigerator or the pleasure of sleeping
in a real bed instead of a piece of foam on a
steel slab.
Livia Pinheiro, who was born in Brazil,
spent eight years in prison for first degree
robbery and was then detained by ICE,
which planned to deport her. It was during
the initial days of the virus and she was
housed in a crowded, roach-infested dormi-
tory room in a county jail where the bunks
were bolted to the floor, making social dis-
tancing impossible. She and other detainees
were finally released after a coalition of legal
organizations successfully argued that the
conditions were unsafe during the pan-
demic.
“Everybody’s freaking out about shelter-
ing in place,” said Ms. Pinheiro, 40, who has
to wear an ankle monitor while living in
Long Beach. “But I feel so free and liberated
to be with a great group of girls in this
house.”
Ms. Burton served six prison terms for
drug possession and intent to sell and was
granted a pardon by Gov. Gavin Newsom
last year for her work helping women at-
tempting to pull their lives together. Her em-
pathy for others was hard won. She endured
years of childhood sexual abuse, com-
pounded by a gang rape as a teenager, dur-ing which she became pregnant with her
first child, a daughter. Then Ms. Burton’s 5-
year-old son, Marque, known as K.K., was
killed crossing the street after being struck
by an unmarked van driven by an Los Ange-
les police detective who she said never both-
ered to get out of the car. The vortex of grief
that followed contributed to drug and alcohol
addiction and a series of abusive relation-
ships with sexually exploitative men.
Still, she became her sister’s keeper. Ms.
Burton’s notion of houses as communal
places for healing — sobriety being one of
the rules — was inspired in part by the treat-
ment center in Santa Monica that aided her
own recovery. The experience, she said, also
opened her eyes to profound inequities in the
criminal justice system in which incarcera-
tion was the default for poor people of color
in neighborhoods like hers, in Watts, while
those committing similar infractions in
places like Santa Monica were offered ther-
apy, A.A. meetings, community service and
parenting classes.
“It’s a tale of two cities,” she said. “One,
five miles down the highway and you’re
treated as a criminal, and the other, a place
where you’re treated as a patient, someone
who needs help.”
A New Way of Life was born after Ms. Bur-
ton had to abandon her chosen career path
— licensed home health aide — because of
her criminal record. She converted her
kitchen alcove into a bedroom and offered it
to other women returning from prison. Over
the years, the organization has become mul-
tidimensional, helping women find jobs and
develop careers (a challenge during the pan-
demic, since many available jobs are un-
safe).
Each new arrival receives an ‘action plan”
that might encompass leadership skills,
therapy (a retired psychiatrist is on call),
college classes and support from the organi-
zation’s pro bono legal team, often regarding
the complex issue of reuniting with children
in foster care.
Of the 46 current residents, six are chil-
dren. Among them are Daishyna Saunders’s
two sons, 6-year-old Emmanuel and Elijah,
4, who enjoy activating their bubble machine
in the backyard of “Miss Susan’s” in Long
Beach. “It means everything to me,” she said
of having her boys back.
Days at the residences in Long Beach and
Los Angeles begin with a morning medita-
tion and conclude with healthful dinners
cooked by staffers. The majority of women
are on parole or probation; the houses are
testing grounds for independence. As they
become more confident and accomplished,
they move on to houses where they are com-
pletely responsible for the household.
Although Ms. Burton claims a 90 percent
success rate, some women do relapse and
are referred to a drug treatment facility.
The atmosphere of each house is impor-
tant to Ms. Burton, who functions as the spif-
fer-upper-in-chief — “making the houses
pretty” with ample light and art on the walls.
Her understanding of the emotional im-
pact of spaces was influenced by Frank
Gehry, who is now a friend. The two met in
2017 during studios Mr. Gehry taught on ar-
chitecture, design and mass incarceration
that was organized by the Soros Open Soci-
ety Foundations and Impact Justice, a re-
search and advocacy organization. The as-
signment, captured in a film, revolved
around a women’s prison in Connecticut;Ms. Burton served as the voice-of reality-in-
residence. “Susan commands respect very
quickly,” Mr. Gehry, 91, observed. “She
brought humanity to the project and a sense
of the magnitude of the problem.”
For her part, Ms. Burton grasped for the
first time “the strikingly cruel intent” of pris-
on design. “Just taking people from their
communities wasn’t enough,” she said.
“They had to hurt their joys over time, hurt
their bodies by depriving them of light and
texture. It was painful to understand the
lengths that people will go to to harm peo-
ple.”
Confinement is precisely what has al-
lowed Covid-19 to flourish, combined with of-
ficials’ lack of judgment. San Quentin, an es-
pecially egregious example, was coro-
navirus-free until 121 inmates from the Cali-
fornia Institution for Men were transferred
there last May. The cramped, airless tiers of
what is essentially a Victorian prison proved
fertile ground: 19 San Quentin inmates died
and more than 2,000 have tested positive in
what Marin County’s public health chief,
called “the worst prison health screw-up in
history.”
But the safety net for those returning
home is frayed at best. Women nationally
comprise only 13 percent of all prison releas-
es in a given year, according to the Prison
Policy Initiative, a criminal justice think
tank, which means that nearly all transi-
tional housing and related programs are
geared toward men. Some resemble prisons,
with metal detectors, contraband checks
and Breathalyzer tests at the door.
Alex Busansky, Impact Justice’s founder
and president, said Ms. Burton “is one of the
original voices pointing out that women’s
needs were not being met in traditional re-
entry settings.”
“Susan proved that we can put people in
real houses on ordinary streets,” he contin-
ued, “and that they have a right to come back
to the community.”
Women pay a modest rent, and adjust-
ment is full of tiny challenges: Some women
have no idea how to shop or use a mi-
crowave. “They’ve been cooking in a can in
prison with a stinger,” Ms. Burton explained,
referring to an immersion device that heats
up water.
Most of the organization’s $2 million budg-
et comes from foundations and individuals
(Natalie Portman recently celebrated her
39th birthday by offering to match any dona-
tion up to $100,000).
Two years ago, after hearing from women
at 46 prisons and jails while reading from her
2017 memoir, “Becoming Ms. Burton,” Ms.
Burton saw the need to expand her model to
other states (and more recently Uganda).
Called the Safe Housing Network, it now
numbers 16 houses, and supports projects
like WIN Recovery in Champaign, Ill., which
serves the rural L.G.B.T.Q. community.
For young women like Lexus, who gave
only her first name because she feared for
her safety, the security and serenity of the
New Way of Life house in Los Angeles could-
n’t come soon enough. She was trafficked at
age 14, and at 19 accepted a plea bargain she
didn’t understand. As a result, she was la-
beled a sex offender and now plans to ap-
peal.
“The house I stay at, you can see the glow
and peace in the women’s faces,” she said,
adding: “In prison you don’t have that aura.
It says, ‘You’re going to be OK’ ”Leaving Prison for a Healing Home
Formerly incarcerated women
get a new shot at success.
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWNAbove, Dana Moore,
carrying a box with her
belongings, heads for a
residence operated by
A New Way of Life
Reentry Project. Left,
Susan Burton, the
founder of A New Way
of Life. Below, one of the
group’s houses, in Long
Beach, Calif.Sheltering those
freed early because
of the coronavirus.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROZETTE RAGO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESArt