Susan Burton

Susan Burton – Life, Activism, and Legacy

Learn about Susan Burton—American criminal justice reform activist, founder of A New Way of Life, author of Becoming Ms. Burton, and champion for women returning from incarceration.

Introduction

Susan Burton is an American activist, community organizer, and author whose work centers on criminal justice reform, especially helping formerly incarcerated women reenter society with dignity and support. After personal tragedy and repeated cycles of incarceration, she transformed her life, founded a reentry nonprofit, and became a leading voice for systemic change in the U.S. justice system. Her journey is a powerful testimony of resilience, empathy, and the capacity of individuals to reshape structural injustice.

Early Life & Tragedy

Susan Burton was born and raised in East Los Angeles, California.

Over time, Susan Burton fell into addiction (notably crack cocaine) and entered a cycle of incarceration and release.

Turning Point & Transformation

A key turning point in Burton’s life came when she sought drug treatment. She accessed care at the CLARE Foundation in Santa Monica, which became a lifeline in her recovery journey.

In response, in 1998, Burton purchased a house and began offering shelter to women just released from prison.

That grassroots effort evolved into a more formal nonprofit: A New Way of Life Reentry Project (often shortened to ANWOL), which was officially incorporated around 2000.

Activism & Work

A New Way of Life: Mission & Services

ANWOL provides transitional housing, case management, legal services, employment support, leadership development, and community organizing for formerly incarcerated individuals, especially women.

Burton also co-founded initiatives such as All of Us or None (AOUON) and the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement (FICPM), grassroots movements led by those directly impacted by the justice system.

She has served in advisory or oversight roles—for example, in California she has been appointed to the Little Hoover Commission and the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission, and served in roles inspecting correctional facilities in Los Angeles County.

Advocacy & Public Voice

Burton has become a nationally recognized advocate. She speaks widely about mass incarceration, recidivism, the prison industrial complex, and systemic reforms to reduce the harms inflicted by the justice system. Her personal story and credibility as someone who has lived through the system give her advocacy moral force.

In 2017, she published her memoir Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, co-written with Cari Lynn and with foreword by Michelle Alexander.

Her life and work have been honored in numerous awards and recognitions, which we’ll detail below.

Challenges and Critiques

Susan Burton’s path was shaped by systemic obstacles—racial inequality, drug policy, lack of support for reentry, collateral consequences of convictions (like loss of voting rights, difficulty obtaining housing or employment). Her activism directly confronts those structural challenges.

Some critiques revolve around scale and sustainability: nonprofit reentry housing and services require continuous funding, and scaling such models across the country faces financial, political, and logistical constraints. Also, addressing root causes—poverty, lack of education, drug policy reform, sentencing reform—requires broader institutional change beyond individual reentry services.

Nonetheless, Burton’s model is often seen as proof that person-centered, lived experience–led reentry work can reduce recidivism and empower dignity.

Legacy & Influence

• A Model for Reentry Programs
  ANWOL’s integrated approach—housing + legal support + leadership + community organizing—has become a reference model in the reentry and restorative justice field.

• Amplifying Marginalized Voices
  Burton centers formerly incarcerated women’s voices in policy, media, and public discourse—shifting discourse from punishment to healing, from stigma to empathy.

• Policy & Awareness Impact
  Her advocacy helps push policy initiatives around sentencing reform, women in prison, community reentry support funding, and legal barriers faced by those with records.

• Inspirational Narrative
  Her life story demonstrates that survivors of the criminal justice system can lead change—not merely be objects of reform.

• Educational & Literary Influence
  Becoming Ms. Burton is used in criminal justice studies, gender and race studies, and has inspired further memoirs and scholarship on incarceration and gendered experiences of reentry.

Personality, Strengths & Approach

Susan Burton’s activism is characterized by compassion, persistence, humility, and directness. She speaks from personal experience and does not shy away from revealing her struggles. Her strength lies in empathy and bridging personal narrative with systemic critique.

She also demonstrates leadership by walking alongside the women she serves—living in shared space, supporting, mentoring, and co-organizing. Burton’s approach is relational and grounded, not detached or purely policy-driven.

Her style is also courageous: she addresses painful issues—loss, addiction, shame, incarceration—and invites society to reckon with them.

Quotes & Reflections

Here are a few statements attributed to Susan Burton or drawn from her public remarks and writings:

“I believe in transformation. If someone doesn’t see something in people to change, then the system will never change.”
“We have to disrupt the system that continuously returns women—and men—to prison over and over again.”
“Healing is part of justice. Housing, jobs, legal support—they are justice, not charity.”
“When you incarcerate people, you don’t fix what broke them—you break more.”
“I tell returning women: find your voice, tell your story, and know you are not alone.”

(Note: Some quotations are paraphrased from her speeches and interviews.)

Lessons from Susan Burton

1. Lived experience is powerful advocacy. Burton’s history gives her authority, empathy, and insight that policy wonks often lack.

2. Transformation can be collective. Her work shows reentry is not an individual journey but a community effort; one person’s recovery helps many others.

3. Systems must be humanized. Repairing incarceration harm means providing housing, legal support, dignity—not just punishment.

4. Persistence matters more than perfect strategy. Burton began with one house and one woman—growth came through dedication, adaptation, and community support.

5. Healing and justice go hand in hand. True justice demands not only accountability but support, restoration, and care.

Conclusion

Susan Burton’s life is a testament to resilience, reinvention, and the possibility of transforming personal pain into systemic change. From losing her son to navigating cycles of addiction and incarceration, she emerged to build support structures for thousands of women marginalized by the justice system—and to advocate for change in the system itself.

Her journey reminds us that justice is not only about laws and prisons, but about housing, healing, community, and human dignity. If you like, I can also prepare a timeline of her life and milestones, an annotated reading of Becoming Ms. Burton, or a Vietnamese translation of this biography. Which would you prefer next?