Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 138. Respect is Contagious: Restorative Justice with Judge Victoria Pratt

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

In this episode, Sharon has a conversation with Judge Victoria Pratt, who’s new book, The Power of Dignity, looks at the ways in which respect in the justice system needs to go both ways. She shares her belief that we have a moral and professional obligation to look our for our neighbors; the whole community benefits when everyone is living their lives to their best and fullest potential. In the courtroom, when people are treated with dignity and respect, it increases their trust in the justice system and bolsters the authority of the people who uphold it. To increase public trust in our justice system, we must allow people to have a voice in the process, give them time to speak, ensure that the court process is neutral, and, above all, look people in the eye. Respect is contagious: everyone in court is impacted by how they are treated by those in positions of authority. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the Level up sales event today at canon.ca. Hello friends. I am so excited to have you here today because I am sharing a conversation with Judge Victoria Pratt, who has a very unique perspective on something called restorative justice and the power of dignity. I think you're going to get so much out of this conversation. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

I am very excited to be chatting today with Judge Victoria Pratt. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me. I like to say that sometimes the judge is not invited to the party, so thank you for inviting me. I like having a judge at the party, so it's fun to have you here. I would love to have you give everybody just a little bit of a background of, first of all, how did you even get to be a judge? So I was serving as the attorney to the council president in the city of Newark when the now Senator Cory Booker, but then Mayor Cory Booker's administration had come in and I was working for the council president. And I would sit in these council meetings and see

these people become new judges. And I remember thinking, what an awesome opportunity to really impact someone's life, which is at first level of court, which is where most people will interact with the justice system, but to really have an opportunity to transform their lives and speak potential into their lives. And so I had a conversation with the mayor and I said, you know, I really would like to serve there. My approach so much comes from watching my mother, who was a beautician in the city of Newark for 20 some odd years. And it's always amazing how, you know, you're like, oh, I'll never become my parent. And then that moment comes and you're like, oh my God, I'm chatting to them. Right. And literally that is what happened. And thank God I did.

Thank God I was raised by this incredible person who just was love and taught me to see people beyond their circumstances and understanding their circumstances really were created by a story that you needed to understand. And then I become a judge and I'm sitting in this space and I'm watching a system that cages Black and brown bodies before they have an opportunity to shine their brilliance in the world. And I'm looking at a system that pushes poor, marginalized, vulnerable people through it and had to do something. Yes. I mean, I think that is one of the challenges that many Americans have. First of all, I feel like most Americans want a fair criminal justice system. We would all say that's what we want. We want a fair criminal justice system. We would all say that's what we want. We want a fair criminal justice system. And yet the approaches of how we attain a fair criminal justice system would vary

widely. Some people would be like, just lock everybody up, get them off the streets, make them not a criminal anymore. And we have spent a fair number of years locking a lot of people up. And that has not resulted in a more peaceful, less poverty stricken, lower crime rate society. Absolutely. So much of why the system remains broken, so much of why people tend not to get involved is because it's easy to say it's them and not me. It's them and not me. And to ignore and not even be concerned about the horrors that the system unleashes upon people, because that's what so much of the power of dignity, my book is about this idea of how transforming justice can heal communities, is that the reason I believe the justice system has to heal communities is because so much of the horrible things that happen to people are because of minor encounters with the justice system.

So it's not proportioned. I'm not talking about mass murderers. And sometimes we can see how the justice system immediately engages mass murderers is worse than how somebody who gets picked up for a disorderly person's offense. So it's this idea that we really need to be doing better and that we as citizens have to be responsible for our neighbors. Rabbi Dobin Prince spoke at the March on Washington, but Dr. King had a dream, so everybody forgot. And he said, neighbor is more than just a geographical location, but it's a moral obligation. And so I believe we have both a moral and a professional obligation to look out for our neighbors, even if we can't touch them because they live next door. But we benefit when people are living to their best and to their fullest potential. It's like when we provide children with an education, the entire community benefits, even if they're not our children.

Absolutely. That's why what you did was so important. That's why teaching is so important. Like that's why teaching is so important because just like at our jobs, our teachers, our education system spends more time with our children than we do. Right. In many cases, that is very true. Yeah. We pick them up after we drop them off early in the morning. We pick them up after school. Sometimes we have someone else that has to pick them up because we're working till six or seven. And so it's this idea that these are places that are valuable. And so that these interactions have to leave people better than we found them.

And so this idea of just, oh, we're just going to punish, we're just going to punish, we're just going to punish. But people aren't learning a lesson from the punishment because the punishment, again, is disproportionate. These are people who suffer from social ills, who suffer from trauma, and they suffer from trauma because of a lot of the things that we allow to happen in society. So since we're on the topic of children, we talk about the school to prison pipeline, creating these zero tolerance policies have created a space that things that when I was in high school, not even to tell you my age or in the school district, things that I could get sent, I would be sent to the principal's office for because the principal was not only

educational leader in the school, but was also responsible for discipline and raising up your children in this space. Now the principal can't touch the kid. Now the principal can't weigh in because in many schools, we have more police officers than we do got guidance counselors in the schools, but there are policies that tell the principal you have to immediately call the police, who is an outside person in our school community. So what does that mean for this kid? I really liked what you had to say. And I think this is a great jumping off place, something to discuss. You say how we currently deliver justice.

This is in your book, The Power of Dignity. How we currently deliver justice undermines confidence in our justice system and discourages the public from participating in or respecting the process, a process that is intended to hold up the existing order in society. And I would love to hear you talk more about how the ways that we deliver justice undermines confidence in them. So, so much of what we're talking about is the approaches procedural justice. But currently, when people have their first contact with the criminal justice system, it's usually with law enforcement. In traffic court, I always say it's a court full of people fighting about the principle of it, not even the actual infraction, but how law enforcement engaged them. Were they respectful when they spoke to them? Did they make eye contact when they spoke to them? The first person that they see is usually a security guard, armed security guard, barking

orders at them, telling them to rid themselves of their personal items and throw them in a basket. Once they get into the courthouse, they ask people different questions about where they're supposed to be because nothing is clear about where they're physically supposed to be in the courthouse. People give them different answers about those things. Then when they get to the courthouse, there's another person in a uniform barking more orders and telling them about how they're violating these rules that they didn't know anything about. No one is answering their questions properly. The judge gets on the bench and then the judge is

reading from a script to them, giving them information that they probably don't understand. And so that is the beginning of how we deliver justice, right? So it becomes that the whole process of just getting to court begins your punishment. And that's before you get to plead not guilty. It begins your punishment. If people believe before you get to plead not guilty. It begins your punishment. If people believe that they're treated with dignity and respect, it increases their trust in the justice system. They begin to see court actors, criminal justice practitioners as legitimate authorities to impose rules and regulations. And that's the important part. You submit to the governance of authorities who believe that they legitimately should be governing you, if they should have a say about how you should behave in society.

But if you go before a judge and they never look you in the eye and they're making decisions about you, how do you trust that person? What do you think about the person who doesn't look you in the eye and they're making decisions about you. How do you trust that person? What do you think about the person who doesn't look you in the eye when you are receiving their ruling? So it's these principles that improve this public trust. One, allowing people to have a voice in the process, letting them talk, making sure that the process is neutral. letting them talk, making sure that the process is neutral. I keep saying looking a person in the eye. I've sat in on judges who were from a script. And at one point the judge says, now look at me and tell me if you recognize me. And I was like, well, if you had looked up what's in the eight minutes that you spend reading your script, you would have realized that everybody was already looking at you.

your script, you would have realized that everybody was already looking at you. So those things that are important, not just in the system, but in human interaction. That's a great point that all of our social norms of how humans are meant to treat each other respectfully are eliminated in a court of law in many, in many cases. So I would love to hear more about what then your approach is. I can just give you some examples of voice in the courtroom, allowing someone to speak. And there are parts in a legal process that a person shouldn't speak because they may not be represented by counsel. And you don't want them to say something that's going to impact their case.

Right. One of the things we do is we give people new court dates and we give people new court dates, particularly in my court, based on a clerk going into the system and what day has more vacancies. Now, that sounds pretty easy. vacancies. Now that sounds pretty easy, but if you had to take a day off to come to court, and now I give you a court date on a day that you have to be at work, you have a doctor's appointment, you might be poor and don't get your check that assists you until the following month. And I don't allow you or create an environment in the courtroom that allows you to just say, judge, you know, can I come on a different day? And it's something as simple as your next court date is on the 23rd. Is that okay for you? That's a question that tells a person to

respond. But oftentimes we say it's the 23rd and the person, that's my date. And that's it. Well, that day that you give them their new court date is also the day you give them a bench warrant for their arrest because they can't make it if they can't afford to come. But it also is this idea that you've given them voice and hearing what's happening beyond just like the one incident that's happening in the complaint. like the one incident that's happening in the complaint. Neutrality is also understanding that some of our processes that are legal don't make the people sitting in the courtroom feel like they are being treated with neutrality.

So in many of our courts, private attorneys go first. That means that if you are the first person in the courtroom but you don't have a private attorney and a private attorney runs in 20 minutes into the session or 20 minutes late, that case goes before you. And I have heard is, oh, because I can't afford to have a private attorney, I don't get the same deal or the same treatment as this person. Right. Or even when we conference cases in the back, let's go in the back or up to the bench. Usually people representing themselves can't come up to the bench. So they're thinking, what are they talking about that I can't hear? Why do they have to whisper? And so again, we're not thinking that that is a process that we're

entitled to use, but how does it look neutral? And then this idea of what it means to be respectful. Good morning, sir. I remember having a judge come up to me at one of the very first panels I'd ever done. And he, you call the defendant, sir and ma'am. And I thought, and I said to them, if I'm discourteous to someone, there's something about me, not about them. It's not my being disrespectful to them makes them less than. But that is how it is interpreted. When you are disrespectful to people, particularly when you're in a position of authority and imagine just using that authority to shift and transform people's lives, to pour something positive, because our whole goal is to get them to stop coming through our justice system. I love that. The, you know, that phrase is not what you say. It's how you say it. I mean, sometimes it is what you say, but there is such a big difference between ma'am, please be seated. And ma'am, would you take a seat, please? Like those are two, two very different experiences.

Yes. You can say the exact same words and the way that you say them means everything. You totally get it, Sharon. Like it's your experience in a space. And based on that, ma'am tells you how you're going to engage the person for the rest of that conversation. Precisely. Precisely. If they start with ma'am, you are immediately mad. You're immediately irritated. You are, you are, it's going to take everything you have to like not yell back. To not yell back. It's so true. That's just human nature. That is human nature. It is. I'm Jenna Fisher.

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Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. We were talking about how when they come to court, they come with all of the anger of the nice officer or the rude officer. But you have to sort out and understand that this is about how they were engaged before they got here. I'm not going to respond to some of the nastiness in the way that they would expect. And there are times that I'm like, stop, stop. We're going to stop because I'm being respectful to return that. And sometimes it means you're going to have a seat outside in the hallway until you can get yourself together. Just go outside because I don't want to have to respond to what it is you're doing. But the reality is that most often we're reacting, you know?

So yeah, you're right. Bam, bam. I need a manager. I need to speak to your manager. Yes. That is being in a high school classroom where if somebody comes in and is really disrespectful to you, chances are very good that it has nothing to do with you. analogous to being in a high school classroom where if somebody comes in and is really disrespectful to you, chances are very good that it has nothing to do with you. Chances are very good. It has everything to do with a problem they're having with somebody else in the hallway or a problem they're having at home or a problem with a significant other. And then you make the problem 1 million times worse by getting in their face about it. And you make it into a power struggle that

then you as the authority figure, you must win. And in many cases, the consequences for winning are forever destroying your relationship with that person. But you have to demonstrate to everybody else in the classroom that I have won because the consequences for not winning are too great. And so if we don't set up that power struggle to begin with, then we don't put ourselves in the position of, I must win this. Absolutely. You know, it's like this idea of holding people in contempt of court. I never did it. And one of the great, one of my great, just William, he's a chief judge now.

He's one of my great teachers. And he told me when I became a judge, he was like, try never to use your gavel and try never to use contempt. And I thought, isn't that what the gavel is for? And then I started to think about, think about, oh, this is how my mother engaged her children. Not because she was treating us as less than, but it's about what you're saying, having to win when you're that person in authority. What I learned is that real authority has to assert itself in that way, right? Because what you were doing is gaining people's respect. Respect is contagious. If I was respectful to the person who came before me, that told the people who were waiting to come after them something about me. That's right. And then they thought, hmm, this judge is respectful. The person who was sitting next to them would nudge them. Listen to how she said good morning

and waited for the person to ask, what's going on with you today? Not as a greeting, but waiting for the person to answer. And so that's what you, exactly what you're talking about. This idea that respect is contagious, but everyone in court is impacted by how you treat that first person. And even when you have to assert yourself and check somebody, when you behave respectfully, respect is really contagious. I love that. I love that phrase. That's so true in classrooms too. If you have earned the respect of the students in that classroom, they will police each other. They will be like, don't say that. That peer pressure actually has a lot more sway than the authority figure saying, don't say that. Peer policing is actually very, very effective in a classroom.

is actually very, very effective in a classroom. Not only did I realize early on, everybody will behave the way the head authority in that court does. And if you're a mean judge, everybody will be mean to the defendants. If you're a respectful and compassionate judge, then everybody will be that way. Now, when you have people who don't behave that way, as the leader in that space, you are responsible for changing their behavior. You want to shift the culture, you make sure that people in your courtroom who

have this authority because of their relationship with you treat people respectfully. Everybody in my courtroom was Mrs. Mr. So if I ever heard a court clerk say, Willie, come up here. If you hear me call him Mr. Brown, then he has to be Mr. Brown when you speak to him. I would love to hear more about some of the sort of alternative consequences that you use in your courtroom. I found those very interesting. Of course, we all know that sometimes people go to jail. Sometimes people pay fines. Sometimes people do community service. They have probation. We're aware of all those, but some of the things that you do are a little outside the ordinary. So I'd love to hear about that. So I was really fortunate.

We had an opportunity to have a relationship with what's called the Center for Court Innovation. And they came to Newark. Cory Booker was the mayor at the time. And he decided that Newarkers deserved better. So we partnered with them to create this idea, this community court. So we had social workers on site. We had compliance officers, but we also brought the community into our process. So community service shifted. So we had community service partners that could also be the solution. So when a person got a sentence, instead of just getting jail, this person got sent to a place to do community service where they could also talk to someone about getting drug treatment. Community gardens, we started sending people to do and take care of community gardens. So the city of Newark had a program where if you had an abandoned lot on your block, literally someone had taken down the house and people started dumping garbage, you could

adopt that lot. We would send people there to do their community service. So now you are cleaning up a lot, throwing down mulch, planting a garden in this community where there was this eyesore that was more blight in a neighborhood. And I remember one guy came and he said, judge, I was asking him about community service at this particular lot. And he said, my neighbor saw me the next day and told me to come by. And I was thinking about what happened. This guy grew up on this neighborhood and this neighbor saw him as a young boy. He then becomes a drug addict that is creating issues in this neighborhood and the neighbor pissed at him.

And the neighbor sees him in this blue vest doing community service, cleaning up the neighborhood that he lives in and he shifts his relationship. He's like, you know what? Let me reach out to him again. And how powerful that is. And so that's what happens

when you work with the community and when you think outside the box of what sentencing should look like. Giving a jail sentence for 90 days. On the 91st day, there's still a drug addict unless you've done something in those 90 days to get them ready for treatment or get them closer to treatment. We know that to get off of drugs, oftentimes it takes five, six times of going to drug treatment. Well, what happens that you go to court and it's the first time as a part of your sentence that you actually go to drug treatment? When people feel understood or they feel like they took the time to hear all of the reasons why something is happening, it's a very different feeling. why something is happening. It's a very different feeling when you have made a mistake and you have the opportunity to explain how this mistake occurred. It feels very different than if

somebody's like, I don't care. I don't care why you made that mistake. Do you know what I mean? There's just, again, you could apply that to a huge variety of situations in your life. And Sharon, imagine you're accepting an explanation and the consequences are not as dire as when you fail to do something that the courts asked you to do. You're facing jail. Be exactly that. I had a death in the family. And I'm not saying that I'm not because I'm telling you I can spot a lie because I worked in a place where people lie. But you still need to listen because there might be a truth in there. There might be paperwork to support that. But when you don't listen to what this thing is that just happened, and then you just punish the person, how are you helping them go back into society and be contributing? So

you're absolutely right, not listening. One of my favorite things was defendants couldn't be late. They couldn't be late to their mandates, which were in the clinic. They couldn't be late to community service and they couldn't be late to court. There was a consequence because I really need people to understand. It's not that I'm just, oh, kumbaya, so sweet, judge. I'm holding people accountable, but they're getting punishment that's proportioned to what they've done. And this young man was late on the train and he comes and he's like, here, judge, I have it. And I'm like, what is he talking about? And he shows me his phone. He actually got the train conductor to videotape a message to me explaining why he's late. And he's late because the train stopped for like an hour somewhere. And I just smiled because not that

he wanted so much to please me, but that he now is learning the consequences and how to be responsible. If I can't meet the goals, I have to have a legitimate explanation, but I have to make every effort to actually hit the target. And so for me, I just, you know, the court becomes a place where you learn, but that people, again, I'm respecting you because I accept that. Okay. You've got a good excuse, but when you don't listen, you don't give people voice. How are you respecting them? And then you want them to respect you. I would love to know for people who are listening to this and they're like, I really resonate with this. This is what we need in my community. We need to stop just locking up low-level offenders who need our assistance and who then become increasingly

criminalized and increasingly violent with each encounter they have with jail. Statistically, people generally don't come out of jail changed people for the better. If people feel like, I would love to see this in my community, what could somebody do to start potentially asking for a system like this? could somebody do to start potentially asking for a system like this? Well, in places where I always, you know, for me, it's always back to civics. Who do you elect to run your town or municipality? Your mayor's office, your legislators. And so if you go to your municipal court and you sit in there like this system is broken. Some of you don't have to do that. You already know it's broken. You need to go to your mayors. You need to go

to your governors. You need to tell them this is what we want. We want community court. We want sentences. We want judges who respect. We want them to be compassionate. That's what we did in Newark. I was shocked to see when people were like, I want the drug dealer who's on the corner, I want those young boys to have jobs, not more jail. I want them to have jobs. So who do you elect? And make this a part of what you want in the people that you elect. Nonpartisan, nonpartisan. And when you get them elected, you hold them accountable for it. These are the people who will appoint judges

and the prosecutor. Your prosecutor's office, make sure that the person who's in that office understands what you want justice to look like. Go there, make sure they're willing to invest their money in the people who live in your community. We need to make sure that we serve everyone, but that we serve them, that we get these folks back to where they need to be, which is productive members of our community. I have two more things I want to ask you. The

first one is a statement that I really loved in your book that said, I have two more things I want to ask you. The first one is a statement that I really loved in your book that said, I have walked paths that were paved and prepared for me by people who did not even know I was coming. I just love that so much. I'd love to know, what does that mean to you? It's about why I serve. Why I serve. It's about gratitude. It's about knowing that I owe it. I always say, look, this is not a job. This is mission work for me. I know that I was called to do it. Sometimes we have that voice that's telling us to do something and it's hard. It's not popular. It's not cute. So for me, so many times in my life, I can say, wow, I got this because somebody else did something. You know, Rutgers Law School in Newark has a minority student program that I am a proud

graduate of it. Well, during the rebellions in Newark, when they were burning down the city, they went to Rutgers. The folks in Newark went to Rutgers and said, you will have people who look like us in these schools. They weren't trying to go to not let them into these schools because we know the contributions that they will make. So for me, it really is about gratitude every day. Not to make it a super long, but there's this minister and he said he was asking God for another moment on this planet. Free exhale is him saying it's granted. And so if you break your life into those inhales and exhales and gratitude and what you have to be doing, you better get to work.

You better get to work. I love that. I just love that statement so much. I want to put it like on a t-shirt, on a mug. You got to get some merch with that on it. Get some merch on your website. I love it. I love that.

What women and women of color have gone through before us. So I can literally roll up into the parking lot, click, click by automatic car locker, walk in, give them my name, be like Sharon McMahon. And they hand me a ballot and I go over there, I fill it out. I've feeded through the thing and I go back to my car and I turn on the air conditioning in my car. The idea that other people did that for me, I don't have to, that I can just roll up and be like, hi, here's my name. I'm voting.

And nobody is, nope. But that's great. We're happy to have you. That is, that was a way that was paved for me, for all of us, by people who came before us. And to me, it seems like the least I could do to just walk that path. The least I could do could say, thank you for the work that you did. Show up. Show up. Yes. I would love to close out by having you tell us more about what you think the title of your book means. What is the power of dignity? It's power to transform the power to see people's entire humanity, dignity. Some of us take for granted that, as you said, we walk up and people assume and treat us with dignity and respect by virtue of just showing up because we're educated, because of our race, because of our economic status. And what it means when you have an entire process, an entire system that ignores you, that fails to see you, this lack of dignity and how our processes destroy dignity. What happens

when I send you, I've taken away your dignity, send you back into the world? What do you care? What do you have to live for? What do you have to live up to? One of the most powerful things that people have said to me in response to me saying, I'm so proud of you is judge. I'm proud of myself. Wow. I'm proud of myself. The first time that you have of being proud of yourself. We all have the ability to exercise this. You don't have to be a judge. You can be that person who answers the phone and doesn't have Sharon asking for your supervisor. It's treating people with dignity and you can do it for free. So it's really a powerful thing. And if we did

more of it, we wouldn't be at odds the way we are in this country. Families would still be able to have Thanksgiving dinner together, even though their political affiliation or their ideas are different about issues. We would respect dignity and their ability to make decisions and how we treated them. So not a short answer, but it's just the power that we have to just treat people differently and to raise them up. You know, I'm like, what does it take someone feel good? I don't keep compliments to myself. My husband thinks I'm the weirdest person. I'm like, oh, I love that lipstick color you're wearing.

But I do. So why would I keep that compliment to myself? I don't need it. I don't need it. It belongs to you. It belongs to you. That's right. I love that. And I love the, the transformative power of dignity and it's free 99. It costs you nothing to give it to somebody else. And what a difference it could make if we all just decided that is, that's the minimum dignity is the minimum

that I'm willing to give other humans of infinite worth. Yes. Well, I really, really enjoyed the power of dignity. I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. This was absolutely delightful. Thank you for the folks who, who go out and buy it, please tell me what you think. Find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. Find my website. Tell me what you've done to ensure that somebody was treated with dignity after reading the book as well. Tell me what you think. Thank you so much.

Yes. What is your website? My website is www.judgevictoriapratt.com. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor.

Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review, or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time. Hey, Torontonians.

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