Justice That Heals

Justice That Heals

Chicago can be cruel to its youth, especially to youth of color living in marginalized communities. Restorative justice practices have begun to emerge in the city aiming to remedy the root causes of harm that is plaguing the streets with crime and violence. BUILD has become a fierce proponent of the restorative justice framework and has added it to its tool kit as it expands its reach in the Austin community. Alongside BUILD, are recently founded restorative justice courts extending a life altering hand. In a city rooted in retributive courts, a drug case can be a life defining moment and it was for Michelle Dennis. 

Transcript

Judith McCray, Executive Producer: [00:00:00] Welcome to Change Agents, the podcast series looking at grassroots actions and solutions from the inside out. Real people making real changes in communities of color and others right where they live and work. Stories about folks transforming their neighborhoods and the narratives about them.

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: I'm Change Agent's producer, Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, with Justice That Heals. 

Michelle Dennis: I think I was about 22, probably 23. I went to the streets because my grandfather had got sick and then my cow's father was murdered. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: That's Michelle Dennis. She's from the North Lawndale community in Chicago, and she's recalling how one court in her community changed the course of her life.

Michelle Dennis: I wasn't [00:01:00] thinking with a level head. I just was thinking I need to get money to support my family. I was one of the first candidates that actually they started off the program with when they had just jumpstart the program. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: The program she is referring to is the Restorative Justice Community Court, or RJCC, an alternative court run through Cook County Circuit Court.

Michelle was one of the first participants in the North Lawndale Restorative Justice Community Court. 

Michelle Dennis: It was like, you know, waiting for a paycheck every two weeks and you needing money right then and there. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Michelle was the sole provider of her then 8-year-old son, Amarion, as well as her grandfather who was fighting an aggressive cancer, and her mom.

Michelle was facing four drug charges and a possible lengthy prison sentence. 

Michelle Dennis: And they actually offered me restorative justice instead of doing real time. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Trying her case through RJCC offered another option, one that could hold Michelle's family together and repair the harm done [00:02:00] to her community. 

Michelle Dennis: I call them my guardian angels.

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: So, our, uh, construction company, they're, uh, very stringent about us having the best. (Safety first). Exactly. So, they don't look sexy, but you have to wear them. So, I gotta get you guys. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: It's the beginning of October. The grass is still green, but the leaves on the trees have begun to turn orange. We're gearing up to undergo a hard hat tour of BUILD's new Community Peace and Justice Center.

After years of envisioning, planning, and building, the new center will open its doors in the Austin community very soon. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: I've been involved with the building from its initial imagination phase where we talked among staff and we work with youth to talk about what kind of building would we want, what would we want in it.

So, we dreamed it. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Bradly Johnson is the Chief Community Officer at BUILD. BUILD stands for Broader Urban [00:03:00] Involvement and Leadership Development. Bradly, like many others who are a part of the organization, grew up in Austin. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: The site that BUILD is on, the form of space that it's in was Shore Bank and actually my dad used to work for that bank, and my father was a contractor and a painter.

He's passed away. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Now the grounds house the new center, one of BUILD's latest efforts to engage marginalized communities of color. They have been servicing youth for over half a century. Their initial programming was gang prevention, but through the years their outreach has expanded. Now at the core of it all is restorative justice.

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: And let's go in here.

This space is the Peace and Justice Center. So, it doesn't look like much yet, but this is our, uh, Peace and Justice Center. This is what we call a community activation space. So, for our young people, for adults, [00:04:00] anybody in the neighborhood, we will be able to come here and be trained and taught about restorative justice, which is a practice that 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: On the tour are Edwina Hamilton and Alden Bell, who are the managers of the center, and a group of students from DePaul University.

These students are on a field trip visiting the Future Center to undergo restorative justice training, a philosophy that will be taught at the new center. And as you were talking to me, I looked down at your pin. So, can you read it for me? 

Edwina Hamilton: “Ask me about RJ.” So, Restorative Justice is called RJ for short, and when you're out in community and people ask me about that, it warrants opportunity to have a conversation about Restorative Justice, which is a philosophy and a way of life.

It's rooted in indigenous culture, and it's a way native people interacted with each other in the village. It got the tagline, Restorative Justice, once it was borrowed from that community. And it's a way of bridging gaps, [00:05:00] mending wounds, healing spiritually. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: So, what is RJ? 

News Clip: Turning now to education news, the concept of restorative justice.

Restorative justice. Restorative practices program. A restorative justice village. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: To me, restorative justice is love. And when you talk about love, it's what love really is. That's you caring about someone else more than you care about yourself, or you're seeing the needs of others in line with yourself.

So, it's not you superseding everyone else before you act, you think because you're wondering like, how's this going to impact my neighbor? How's it going to impact my family? So, you're thinking about others in your actions. And so, When I boil it down, restorative justice is just at the root core of love, and that's not the romantic thing. This is just about care for others. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: The building is so exciting. How is it going to further the philosophy of restorative justice? 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: The building in [00:06:00] itself, I would say, is a physical manifestation of what restorative justice is. Restorative justice is about building relationships, but it's also about wholeness.

It's about people who have been harmed. And the person that caused the harm, that you're coming to a place where you're repairing that harm. And so our space will also literally have the Peace and Justice Center inside of it. Where we'll be training and teaching restorative justice and restorative justice practices along with the civic education, along with community organizing, along with exposure to policy and advocacy.

So together, the building and the space would allow us to activate community and bring awareness to restorative justice. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: RJ is the alternative to what is already in place. In our country and many parts of the world, punitive justice is what we are accustomed to. It's the belief that through punishment, people will take accountability for their actions and not repeat their harmful behavior.

[00:07:00] Advocates of restorative justice say retributive sentencing doesn't address the root causes of harmful behavior and leads to recidivism, while also lining the pockets of private prisons. The United States is the world leader in incarceration, with around 2 million people currently behind bars and holding 20 percent of the world's prison population. On average, private prisons profit $374 million annually. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: The reality is that our current system does not work. It has not worked. It's actually caused further harm when you take a person who committed, whether it's a crime or they, they did something wrong, and you take them out of community, you put them in a system that further deepens the trauma and the negativity.

It's like builds on top of it, then put them back in the neighborhood to cause further harm. 

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: It's a court based on ancient practices, circle keeping practices. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: That is Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt. She is a member of BUILD's Board of Directors and presides over [00:08:00] the Restorative Justice Community Court in North Lawndale.

This specific location was the first in Cook County and has been in operation since 2017. 

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: I think retributive court is completely nonproductive. I think restorative court is completely, completely productive. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: RJCC North Lawndale is one of three courts in the city that gives young adults ages 18 to 26 facing nonviolent offenses the option to undergo a restorative justice program in exchange for their case or cases being dropped.

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: When they come to our court, the first step is they meet with the representative from Cook County Social Services. He does an assessment of their needs and their current abilities. And once he's done that, he prepares a written assessment and recommendations. The recommendations are given to a case manager who is assigned to the participant.

Once they get to us, they're no longer a defendant, they're a participant. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: It's through RJ Practices that a team of case managers, circle keepers, community [00:09:00] members, and the participant come to a resolution. This is achieved either through restorative conferences and or peace circles with family, friends, victims, and the community.

The anti-goal of the conferences and circles is to outline a Repair of Harm Agreement.

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: The Repair of Harm Agreement is an agreement with the community 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: For the agreement, participants come up with a list of goals, no more than six, of things they need to complete to restore their life, the lives or actions have impacted and repair the harm they have made to the community.

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: There's an infinite variety. It's just a matter of imagination what these goals should be. Because they're different for every person. Every person has different needs. Typically, they involve some hours of community engagement. They might involve attending a stick talk course that we have here in the North Lawndale area that deals with gun use and gun possession.

They might need parenting classes because they have an infant child. [00:10:00] They might want to get their driver's license if they don't have one or get a suspended license returned to them. So, they have to work on getting that license unsuspended. They might want to get a job. Sometimes they're looking for housing.

Some of our participants are couch surfing. So, these goals that they set for themselves and they're never onerous. They're always achievable. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Participants meet periodically with the judge and their case manager to track goals and progress. It could take a person one year or sometimes even seven years to reach graduation.

There is no real timeline because one size doesn't fit all. That was the case for 29-year-old Michelle Dennis, whose story you heard at the beginning of this episode. 

Michelle Dennis: They worked around the clock. They wasn't only just there for the courts. They would call to see and talk to me on the weekends. They would check on my son, presents and everything.

They helped with trying to find me an apartment. They actually helped with different activities with my son. And they also gave us counseling, [00:11:00] grief counseling. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: For Michelle, the program helped her out in countless ways. But the biggest blessing was being able to be present for her son through the years.

Michelle Dennis: His name is Amarion. His father's name is Mario. So, I put an A in front of the M and an N after the O. He is amazing. He is the most smartest kid that this world has. He started walking in like six months. I knew that I had some type of special kid. He's very, very smart in school. They actually been trying to skip him up since he's been in fifth grade.

That's another reason why I always thank the restorative justice because without them giving me a chance, I wouldn't have been there to pick up my son's report card or to be there to help him with his homework if I was behind bars. It's only so much you could do from a phone call. And I'd rather be present in his life to be there for him knowing that his father isn't around.

I knew that I had to be there 24/7 around the clock and I wasn't giving up. And I actually wrote a [00:12:00] letter to my son, um, basically apologizing to him for not, how do I say this, for not choosing the right path. I wouldn't say not being a good mother because no matter what I did, I always was a good mother.

It was, I chose the wrong path. trying to do something in a rush and I should have had patience. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Michelle recently walked the stage this past October, seven years after starting the program. 

Michelle Dennis: So many doors have opened. So many different jobs have opened. A lot of people see me serious now and they don't see me as this bad person or this woman that sells drugs.

I actually have a voice now. You know, people actually see me for who I really am and that's a good person. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: During her restorative process, Michelle recruited others who were also facing cases to join RJCC. 

Michelle Dennis: People that I knew that would get locked up, they would call me because I'm like a big sister, a godmother to a lot of people because I've reformed. I've been trying to change. [00:13:00] 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: One of those people was her own nephew. 

Michelle Dennis: His name is Demarcus Wiggins. He was actually killed last year when we originally was about to have the graduation. He was shot down. He was actually on the right path to changing. He was actually with me doing a lot of bad stuff and he was one of the kids that I had grabbed and I personally took restorative justice program when he was in the midst of a drug case.

He had got back into school. Kind of hurt my feelings a little bit because he was actually trying to change and his life was taken before anybody could see it. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Michelle continues to provide support for those looking for a second chance. Despite the loss of her nephew, she remains strong. 

Michelle Dennis: I know the moment that I break down and I cry, everybody else is going to feel like the world is going to be over with.

That the one person that they're always counting on can't be there. So, I try to keep a level head and I know that things happen and I know that I have to just keep going. [00:14:00] 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Transformations like Michelle's can be found in restorative justice centers throughout the country. The success has led to a growth in the practice.

Part of the reason why it has taken so long for RJ to be integrated into our justice system is that it isn't easily quantifiable. 

Honorable Judge Patricia Spratt: The results we're getting in North Lawndale, 80% of the young people who come through the program successfully over the last five years, 80 percent of them have not recidivated, have not returned to criminal ways.

So that saves the county money. So, let's just divert that money and spend it on more restorative justice courts in the county or in the city. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: The numbers in Chicago's RJ court show just that. There are 77 communities in Only three of them have a restorative justice community court, North Lawndale, Avondale, and Inglewood.

Members of BUILD want to see Austin become the city's fourth. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: Restorative justice is effective. 

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: [00:15:00] Despite being Chicago's third largest neighborhood, Austin shares few of the city's resources. The median household income is around 35, 000 compared to a citywide average of 62, 000. 24 percent of its residents don't have internet access, and 30 percent live at poverty level.

But Bradley believes Austin is a community on the rise. 

Bradly Johnson, Chief Community Officer, BUILD Chicago: I grew up, you know, a few miles away down, Laramie, down the street. And so, when people come out, I'm able to show them our community. I'm able to show them our city. center and also show that there's so much beauty, there's so much creativity, there's amazing things happening beyond what you see in the media, what you hear and think about when you talk about the Austin neighborhood, the West side.

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Michelle also believes that restorative justice empowers communities. 

Michelle Dennis: I feel like the Restorative Justice Program should definitely expand because it's a great program, especially for kids that are making bad decisions. I'm happy that the program was around [00:16:00] and I would love to come back to be a teacher or volunteer there to, you know, help out and get kids on the right path.

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: Have that full circle moment.

Michelle Dennis: Yeah.

Jocelyn Martinez Rosales, Producer: I leave you with something Alden said to me when I started research for this podcast. It's a quote from Desmond Tutu:

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in. 

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Change Agents.

I'm Jocelyn Martinez Rosales. 

Judith McCray, Executive Producer: Thank you for joining Change Agents, the podcast series looking at grassroots actions and solutions from the inside out. Produced by Juneteenth Productions. Theme music composed by Sara Abdelal. Funding support provided by the Chicago Community Trust, the Field Foundation, and DePaul University's Center for Communication Engagement.

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