Helping Women Get a New Start After Prison
It’s easy to spot the women just released from prison.
They emerge at the downtown Los Angeles bus station weary from the long ride, some still wearing their prison denim. They carry their belongings in garbage bags or in cardboard boxes.
Hovering not too far away are the neighborhood drug dealers and pimps, like vultures circling kills.
“Do you wanna get high?” they ask. “Do you wanna come home with me?”
For a woman just released from prison--a woman like Susan Burton--sometimes the offers don’t seem so bad.
Burton, now 50, made the trip back home from prison six times, and on each bus ride she would dream of a new life far from drugs and the street. But the temptation to get high and make quick money always proved too hard to resist.
She would never make it past the bus station. “Everytime I left there, I left with a firm resolution not to be back, but I couldn’t beat the odds,” Burton said.
Finally, in 1997, she found the help she needed. She sobered up and began working as a nurse for an elderly woman. The woman allowed Burton to live in her home. Burton put money away for two years before having enough to make a down payment on a modest three-bedroom house in Watts.
In late 1999, Burton opened the house to women with nowhere else to go upon release from prison. A New Way of Life Reentry Home, the name she gave to this program, provides women with housing, food and social services until they are able to stand on their own.
Upon their release, “these women are in the absolute worst economic shape,” said Marilyn Montenegro, a clinical social worker who volunteers her time at A New Way of Life. “A landlord won’t rent to them; they have a bad credit report; they don’t have the money for first and last month’s rent.”
The women are given $200, known as “gate money,” upon release from prison and often spend much of it for a bus ticket home. If they don’t have any family or support system, they can be left with little more than $100 with which to start life anew.
“They’re often back in jail within the next week or so, or they’re on their parents’ doorstep or their friends’ doorstep making them miserable,” said Doris Mahlum, district administrator at the state Department of Corrections.
That’s what happened to Barbara Matthews.
“I got off the Greyhound, and there they were, asking me if I wanted to smoke something,” said Matthews, 53. “I went straight down there [the downtown bus station] and relapsed.”
It wasn’t long before Matthews was back in jail, busted for trying to sell cocaine to a plainclothes officer on skid row, where she had lived among the city’s homeless. In prison, Matthews, who cannot read or write, had a friend type a letter to Burton asking for help. Burton visits state prisons once a month to tell women about her home.
“We met and she said, ‘I got your bed,’” Matthews said. “For somebody who didn’t know me to help me like that, well, I just thought it was sweet as pie.”
Many of Burton’s women come to her with no money and a host of medical and psychological problems. A large percentage of the 68 women, ages 18 to 56, who have slept in her bunk beds are known as dual-diagnosed cases, meaning they suffer from drug addiction and some sort of mental illness requiring mental health services.
And then there are the women who simply need help getting their lives back in order. The ones who must learn to get a Social Security card, a birth certificate, a driver’s license. The ones who are eligible for government assistance but are overwhelmed by all the paperwork. The ones hoping to reconnect with estranged family members.
The women in Burton’s home must pay rent, go to school or work and attend regular 12-step meetings. Rent is $400 a month and includes room, meals, transportation and some clothing.
For six months after their release, the Department of Corrections sponsors some of the women who have undergone drug treatment programs in prison, Burton said. Others are sponsored by Walden House, a nonprofit organization that provides social services to drug and alcohol addicts. Burton says that many of the women who reach out to her do not have the money to pay right away, but that they usually work something out.
Rent goes toward the $1,000 mortgage payment, utilities, insurance, food and paying their cook, Ora “Mitzi” Bozart. There are 10 beds at A New Way of Life. Eight of them are currently occupied.
Until recently, Burton was sleeping on a futon in a small room of the house. But a fellowship from the California Wellness Violence Prevention Program in December has allowed her to take home a modest monthly salary of $800, which she uses to rent an apartment down the block. The grant gives A New Way of Life $6,000 four times a year.
In Los Angeles County there are 400 to 500 sober living programs, according to the Sober Living Network, a coalition of such facilities in Southern California. Few are designed specifically for women emerging from prison, said Donna Williams, president of the South Central Sober Living Coalition, to which Burton belongs.
Sober living facilities offer a structured environment for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. Unlike Burton’s program, most traditional sober living programs are hesitant to take clients with mental health problems, said social worker Montenegro. And few programs are willing to serve women who can’t pay.
Burton takes in women regardless of whether they have been in drug treatment, recognizing that it can be difficult to get into a treatment program while in prison. As long as they’re committed to their recovery, Burton says, she can work with them.
Even if the women relapse, Burton said it’s important to understand that a relapse is often part of the recovery process. That’s why she gave Matthews a second chance five weeks ago. Matthews left the house and got high on cocaine, but recognized her mistake and called Burton from the L.A. Mission.
“I personally understand what that’s like,” Burton said. “We all make mistakes. Sometimes people slip, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthy of the support.”