When police found a gun in his car during a traffic stop, Rayshawn Fields found himself in a sticky situation.
It wasn’t just his future that a felony conviction would jeopardize. He had a baby on the way.
A judge gave him a way out: Enter the North Lawndale Restorative Justice Community Court, a program that offers nonviolent offenders 18 to 26 a chance to atone for wrongdoing. Graduate from the program and the charge would be dismissed and his record expunged.
Fields, 23, brought his 3-month-old son, A’suntae, to his graduation ceremony Thursday at the West Side facilities of UCAN Chicago, a nonprofit dedicated to violence prevention, which partners with the court.
Fields wrote a rap song for the occasion and needed a moment to pull up the lyrics on his smartphone.
Judge Patricia Spratt, who runs the court, took advantage of the downtime to hold the baby.
“I’m just going to cuddle for a minute, if that’s OK with you?” she told Fields, who signed off on the snuggling and began rapping.
I can’t fold under pressure
I give up saying: me, not, never
Been so busy chasing cheddar
Forgot to keep my head together
Bad decisions, but I’m clever
Right direction, wrong weather
Every time the sky rain, the sun shine, we shine together
Got me starting, now I can’t let up through all this pain
Got to keep my head up
Cuz our family getting a little bigger
And all these problems ain’t matching these figures
Tim Evans, chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, shook Fields’ hand and addressed the graduates in the room.
There were only four, the other 76 couldn’t get off work, Evans said with joy, noting the success of participants getting and keeping jobs.
The ceremony was the first held since the onset of the pandemic and honored all graduates who made it through the program in the last three years.
“We know what you’ve been through. We know that you didn’t have the resources you needed growing up. We know that you’ve been traumatized. We know what you had to overcome. Look at you now. ... I just want you to know how proud we are of you. You returned to this community not as convicted felons, but as contributing citizens,” he said.
Fields said he only had a gun because it’s dangerous on the West Side where he lives.
“I thought I was doing it the right way. It’s dangerous around my way,” he said.
Stanley Roberts, 26, didn’t make Thursday’s ceremony. He, too, faced a gun charge. He, too, feared his environment.
Roberts said he’s come to realize he can’t hang around with pals who are in gangs.
“Someone sees you with those people and automatically thinks you’re part of that group,” he said. “It’s hard to disassociate, but you gotta be smarter than the average person in order for you to survive, especially in Chicago.”
Roberts is working toward his goal of owning a rental car company. One of the goals he needed to accomplish was registering the business as a limited liability company with the state, which he’s done.
“It was a big deal for me. A lot of people say they are going to do stuff like that and never do. And a lot of people don’t know how,” he said.
Asked how she ended up in the program, Michelle Dennis, of Garfield Park, said: “Making a bad decision, wanting to get money in a fast way, and I should have just done it the correct way.”
She’s now working at a logistics company and going to school to become a phlebotomist.
“As part of the program, she wrote a letter to my son about the program and what it’s meant to me,” she said.
“He actually cried,” said Dennis, 29, who did her required service work by volunteering at his school.
She told the room full of about 75 people who attended to support the graduates: “All we needed was a fightin’ chance, and you guys gave us that.”
The North Lawndale court was founded in 2017 as the first Restorative Justice Community Court in Cook County. Others have since been added in Avondale and Englewood.
Of the young people who enter the North Lawndale program, 84% do not go back into the criminal justice system.
The courts resolve conflict through restorative conferences and peace circles involving participants, victims, family members, friends, others affected by the crime and the community.
Audrey Dunford, a program coordinator who oversees peace circle gatherings, said she sees in each participant the moment they decide to open up about their life.
“It’s not an easy thing,” she said, noting she has to open up about herself before the students take the leap.
“You’ve got to have some skin in the game, too. I grew up in the neighborhood, and as a young person I came within an inch of finding myself in their shoes,” she said.
