Purpose prize winner susan burton

From her years in the prison system she knew that buses bound from southern California prisons routinely deposited parolees in downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, an area infamous for rampant

drugs, crime and homelessness. Three or four buses pulled up every day, dropping off inmates with about $200 (money parolees receive upon release) and often nowhere to go. So in 1998 Burton

started going to the bus depot and inviting women she recognized to stay at her place. She converted an alcove off the kitchen into her bedroom, and the women slept four to a room in bunk

beds. About a year later, Burton was paying for everything with her rapidly diminishing savings. She had lost her job when the woman she had been caring for was admitted to a full-time care

facility. Burton heard that a local church was giving away bus tokens, so she tried to get some for the women living with her. It was getting harder to pay for their bus fare herself. But

the church group told her she needed to incorporate as a nonprofit organization to qualify for the tokens. Until that day she had never considered running a nonprofit. Though she had been

helping others for two years already, A New Way of Life was officially born in 2000. A friend then helped her successfully apply for a grant. Twelve years later, Burton’s shelter has grown

to five transitional residences in downtown Los Angeles that have served a total of 600 people. The organization operates on a $1 million budget, with 10 employees managing services for

women rebuilding their lives after prison, including lodging, food, legal aid and job training. Sixty-five percent of California parolees will return to jail within three years, according to

the state corrections department, and about half of those will do it within the first six months. By comparison, Burton estimates that of the 500 former inmates she has tracked at 18 months

after leaving the shelter, around 80 percent were employed or taking classes and had not returned to jail. In 2011, A New Way of Life’s five homes served 40 women and 13 children at about a

third of the cost of incarceration, which in California averages about $47,000 annually per inmate, according to the state department of corrections. Now that word is out, Burton doesn’t go

to Skid Row anymore. Inmates write to her, and she shuttles them from the prison gate to one of her clean, bright homes. Most of the women stay between nine months and two years. For women

with children, A New Way of Life assists with the legal process of parent-child reunification, gathers paperwork for schooling, secures reliable child care and more. On a late July

afternoon, the scene in one of the homes looks idyllic. Stacey Johnson, 45, who has lived there a year, folds laundry in her bedroom as sunlight streams in. Down the hall, a woman and a

little girl in braids draw pictures, while out in the living room another woman types on a computer.