Dignity and Justice: Judge Victoria Pratt
May 11th, 2023
“It's our civic duty to treat people with dignity and respect.”
Judge Victoria Pratt was Chief Judge in Newark Municipal Court in New Jersey and the author of The Power of Dignity. She is currently the Executive Director of Odyssey Impact, an interfaith non-profit driving social change through innovative storytelling and media. We discuss procedural justice, municipal court reform, and increasing the public's trust in the justice system.
Tough-on-crime laws are ineffective. Punishing people for wrongdoing does not change behavior. Judge Pratt asserts her authority when she understands the people who appear in court before her. People obey the law when they are treated with respect and dignity, because then they view the people who impose rules and laws as legitimate authorities. Engaging with the criminal justice system is punishment enough, whether you're innocent or not.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Judge Victoria Pratt
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Judge Pratt Transcript
Andy Slavitt: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Andy Slavitt, host of In the Bubble from Lemonada Media. In the Bubble is the go to place to learn more about the most important news events on your mind and with a bunch of awards to prove it, we take the time that's needed to go beyond the headlines with A-list guests from my bubble, from Tina Fey to Tony Fauci, from the next vaccine to the next election issue, to an occasional dad joke. It's actual facts from actual experts. In the Bubble every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:32] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
Democracy and justice are inextricably linked. When our systems fail to provide equal access to justice, when our systems are unfair and seen to be unfair, the whole democratic project is undermined. That's why we've been looking at some key aspects of justice and public safety in the past few weeks, including police accountability and bail reform. Today, we're focusing on an often overlooked part of the justice system, the day to day and incredibly consequential work of municipal courts. It's a part of the system that has a huge impact on communities and can teach us a lot about justice throughout the system all the way to the Supreme Court.
Our guest today is Judge Victoria Pratt. She was chief judge in Newark Municipal Court in New Jersey, where she spent years gaining a deep understanding of how justice could be delivered to court participants in a way that increased their trust in the legal system and changed their behavior. Judge Pratt's TED Talk on the power of showing people respect has over 38 million views on YouTube and Facebook. Her book, The Power of Dignity, was published by Seal Press last year with a foreword by Senator Cory Booker. And today, she's executive director of Odyssey Impact, an interfaith nonprofit driving social change through innovative storytelling and media.
Judge Pratt, thank you for joining us.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:02:13] Thank you so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:15] It's really a pleasure to have you on. So I wanted to start at the very beginning with you. Your beginning, if you will, because so much of your work is about understanding the journeys people have been on. You kind of grew up in a beauty parlor, your mother's small business. What did you learn from her and from that experience?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:02:35] I learned that young people who have entrepreneurs for parents have to earn their keep. My mother's beauty salon was not a place of business. It was really her place of healing. And that is exactly what I saw happen there. I saw people come in, primarily women come in, women who had migrated from the South. They always say, you ended up in Newark because you got to Penn Station and you thought they said New York and you got off. But it was really Newark. And so I saw immigrant women who had come to this country for a better life. And my mother, who had also come in the 60s to the United States for a better life for her unborn children, and I would hear their stories of struggle, of liberation, of making ends meet for their family and in this protected, beautiful place of a beauty salon. And what I saw was my mother take care of the people in the community. So here's a business that took care of the homeless. She visited the HIV positive. And if you remember, when AIDS hit our country, people were disowned by their families because they didn't want to catch it. They didn't understand it. I learned that people were more than what you saw, that they had an entire story attached to them. Oftentimes, losing a job sent them over the edge, sometimes losing a family member. And so when asked about what justice looks like, it's more than punishment for me because there are a number of things that drive people and push them into the justice system intentionally and as a result of their condition. And so seeing people and knowing that you had a responsibility to help folks to feed them because they were your neighbors, to listen to them because they crossed your path. And people don't just cross your path for no reason. And it was a community of Asian Americans who owned beauty supply stores, of Muslims who owned eateries in this community. So seeing what it meant and learning respect and what dignity meant and and to have people from different languages communicating through their broken English but still being able to do it was really important for me. So when I got to the bench, it was all of those things that I carried with me that were important and seeing and hearing the folks who came through the justice system.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:02] Right. I actually listened to your book in audio form. It seems to me that your court was also a place of healing. And I really want to talk about those years, the chronology. How do you go from the beauty parlor to becoming a judge?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:05:20] So I think what's interesting about my career is that I've had an opportunity to work in the executive branch. I worked for then Governor McGreevey. I've had an opportunity to work in the school district. I worked at the Camden City School District, and then I worked in the legislative branch when I worked for the Newark Municipal Council as the attorney for the council. And I think seeing how all of these branches of government work sometimes in silos, but the purpose is to be of service to the people who elect them and subsequently have them appoint people to serve them. And how oftentimes the last thing that happens is that the people who are supposed to benefit from the process actually get it because people are worried about running for office again and where money comes in to support particular issues and how folks who don't understand how powerful their vote is. Like when you look at how many registered voters are in many spaces. And you look at how people get elected by just a small fraction of that vote. I thought, my goodness, this is why you need to vote because you will be impacted by this system. When Cory Booker became the mayor and I saw him bringing all of these judges on to the bench, I thought, wow, what an opportunity to actually impact a person's life. Because the reality is most people will only see the municipal court when they see the justice system. And so what a key space to be in to actually transform their lives and return them back to their community. And so I sat there and I just decided that this is where I was going to serve. I was afraid, and I did it anyway. But I just thought, what an awesome opportunity to speak potential into the lives of the folks who come through the criminal justice system.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:19] Oh, it's amazing that you were so clear sighted about the opportunity. Let's talk about your first few months on the job as chief judge of Newark Municipal Court, Part two. What was the work of your courtroom and what were you seeing?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:07:35] When I first started, I wasn't even the chief judge yet. I was just presiding over this court. And what was interesting is that when I started at the court, I started in traffic court and there was a crash and people would come in and they didn't have money to pay their traffic tickets. And I thought about, "my goodness, when
they don't pay this traffic ticket that they just pled guilty to is going to lead to an arrest and we're going to upend their lives, not because they did something wrong, but but because they couldn't afford to pay a traffic ticket that they pled guilty to." I then got sent to the criminal court part two, and at the time it was going to be the new home for the Newark Community Solutions Program, which was our alternative sentencing program. So now a judge would have an opportunity to sentence a person to punishment with assistance as opposed to just this punitive system. You know, we have this unsatiated desire to just punish people and punish people, as if it changes people's behavior. And the biggest problem is that we punish people disproportionately for the wrong doing and then we send them into communities and then expect them to behave differently when in fact sometimes it's the law that sends them into our Court system that needs to be changed. And all we were doing was processing paper, processing fines that we knew they couldn't pay and then demanding that they behaved differently when in fact it was us. It was the system that needed to behave differently. It was a system that was used to deal with our annoyance, our annoyance at seeing people sleeping in the park. We didn't want to address the fact that when we give developers a bunch of land, you claim eminent domain over where people live and then you give people their land and then there's a big development project. We know that we're going to gentrify and move people out of communities because most folks who are broke are the working poor, so they barely make enough to sustain themselves, but they're going to end up on the street. So instead of dealing with that issue, we were now incarcerating them because it was annoying to see them sleeping in the park. It was annoying to have them at Penn Station begging for change and the wrong cure was to just send them to the courthouse. So that's what communities all over the country did. We just penalized for impinging on our quality of life, which means having to see you and having to see your destitute condition, is what I really feel like. We don't want to see that. We know people are suffering and we don't want to see it. So just send them down to the courthouse and make the judge do something. The problem is that they hadn't given judges any tools to do anything about people's condition. So if a person stole a $5 candy bar, I was annoyed because that meant that an officer was able to stop working the streets to arrest this person, process them and bring them to me, when in fact I'd rather the officer just pay for the candy bar and make sure that the person eats because that's why they're stealing the candy bar. But the system just ends up on its head and it just doesn't make sense. And it's a waste of taxpayer dollars to do this thing and just to
constantly criminalize hunger, to criminalize being destitute, to criminalize being mentally ill and not providing services for families to help those people.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:53] Right. Well, these repeated offenses, if I may call it that, of people coming to the court for, you know, small theft or sleeping on a park bench. And the way that you talked about this in the book, it was something that was really illuminated to me that we may think of this as a low level court. Right? What a lot of municipal courts do. But the consequences are profound because some of the folks that you saw in your courtroom have been jailed and released dozens of times. And you describe it as a life sentence, served in 30 day installments. And it just was one of those things where I had never thought about it in this way, right. That we are frittering away these people's lives because it's not convenient for us to see them in destitution, like you just said. So one of the things I think is so important about the way you view the world is how observant you are, how closely you listen. And this is actually pretty foundational to procedural justice, as far as I understand it, that fairness is seen, that the people in the system are seen in all of their humanity and given a fair hearing.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:06] We are taking a quick break to share about a podcast called Mindshift that you might want to check out. When we come back, Judge Pratt is going to take us through the key steps of procedural justice, a kind of how to of treating people with dignity, not only in the justice system, but in life in general.
But first. Do you ever wonder how we can better prepare our kids for the future? Do you believe that education can be more than just memorizing facts and taking tests? Then you won't want to miss Mindshift, the podcast that explores the future of learning and how we raise our kids. Whether you are a parent, educator, or just someone who is curious about how to improve education for all learners, check out Mindshift. Each episode is packed with practical tips and expert insights about how to better show up for young people in the classroom and beyond. Hosts Kara Newhouse and Nimah Gobir dive into topics like the role of AI in schools, how to build belonging, what restorative justice looks like in action, and so much more. And the best part? You'll hear directly from educators and researchers who are doing groundbreaking work in the field of education. Listen and subscribe to Mindshift wherever you get your podcasts or visit KQED.Org/mindshift.
And now let's return to my conversation with Judge Victoria Pratt.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:37] Let's talk a little bit about procedural justice. I think it's fair to say it doesn't necessarily sound revolutionary, but it's transformative. Can you give us a broad definition of what procedural justice actually means?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:13:52] So procedural justice, which not only applies in the criminal justice system, but throughout any field where you engage another human being. It's this idea that if people are treated with dignity and respect and fairly by the justice system, not only does it increase the public's trust in the justice system, it also increases satisfaction with judges orders, and it also reduces crimes because people will begin to obey the law. And people don't obey the law because they're afraid. They obey the law because they begin to see... People, if they are treated fairly with dignity and respect, they begin to see that people imposing those rules and orders as a legitimate authorities to impose rules and regulations. That's why we vote, because we want folks to lead us. But we submit to that and we become governable if we see folks as legitimate authorities to impose rules and regulations. There are these four principles that, when applied, give you the results you want. You know, Tom Tyler started his studies on procedural justice back in the 70s, and these were the things that he found. You know, I didn't realize I was practicing procedural justice. I was treating people the way that I would want my mother to be treated if they came to court. And then I would tell folks that. And then I realized a lot of people don't like their mamas, so that wasn't a good way to get them to behave properly. And so, you know, he watched judges who had success in this. And when someone came to court, they were like, do you just do this naturally? And I thought, why wouldn't you treat someone respectfully? There's a book called The Process is the Punishment. And it's about having to engage the criminal justice system is already the punishment, whether you're innocent or not. And so how do you give it back to a person who is innocent of a crime? The mistreatment that they receive, the punishment that they receive, by just going through the process of being in the criminal justice system, how you're spoken to, how people don't listen. The first principle is giving people voice. I like to tell leaders that they have to practice the art of shutting up, and that's because in leadership people come to us for an answer. They come to us to guide them, but sometimes we don't listen to give proper instruction. And so at points you have to learn to shut the hell up so that you can really make meaningful decisions. About what's happening and really see it. If you don't have a constant ego
check. On the inside or on the outside, you won't be successful at leadership. The second principle is neutrality, and it's important that people see that they can come into the halls of justice and that justice is going to be served there because the process is neutral. And that's not what happens when most of our folks come in to the criminal justice system, particularly for Black and brown people who have a history of systematically being oppressed by all systems and going into a justice system that was created to punish and keep us in line. What happens when you show up and you already expect that and then you get that right? What I knew is that most of the folks who came before me in our court, it was a small percentage of the population, but most of them were poorly educated. Most of them spoke a second language in Newark. Because we're a transit hub in New Jersey, we would translate like 24 languages a year. That's a lot of different languages to be able to translate. But also people who needed American Sign Language, people who were blind, how were they engaged in the justice system? What happens when a person has literacy issue and they walk into a building that has signs all over it and it means nothing to them. They're lost. That was why understanding was important. And I always mention veterans because we have this divide in the country about how we treat veterans. And one of the things we had to do was identify veterans so that we could get them assistance. And the administrative office of the court would send down this typed up thing. You got to read and you get to reading it and it doesn't make sense to you. And people wouldn't identify and, you know...
Mila Atmos: [00:18:13] let alone a layperson, yeah.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:18:16] Let alone a layperson. And we knew that Newark, Penn Station first, it was the largest unofficial homeless shelter, but it had a huge number of veterans dating back to the Vietnam War and people wouldn't identify. So I started to just ask if you've ever been in the service, if you've ever worn the uniform, if you've ever been in the military, please let me know. But I used the language that they use to identify themselves. "I wore the uniform. Oh, she's talking about me." And then they could get connected to services. They're not difficult principles, but what it means to be respectful in a court system, what it means to understand that you haven't made a determination as to a person's guilt or innocence. And so saying "good morning." Why is that such a radical idea? Why is looking at a person to see if they're about to pass out? Do you need a chair? Are you okay? Let me call your case back up. Recently, one of
my homeless people taught me something. When he came up before me, he was in such a bad mood, I was like, Why are you acting up in court? You never behaved this way. He came to court late, so I took him in order and he said, Judge. You took me too late. It's 1:00 o'clock, which means I missed my meal at the soup kitchen, and it's the only meal I get a day. And it devastated me because I didn't know. Now, respect means now that I know this, every time he came to court, he went quickly because I had to make sure he got to the soup kitchen to eat. Now. That also meant that the officers when he came in were like, "Judge, he's here. Make sure you're done with him before 12." So we moved him. Just because I compel him to come to court doesn't mean I have to make him starve for the day. You know, and that is respect, understanding his circumstances and his situation and honoring it. Go on and get your food. Come back tomorrow. Go eat and then come back. Whatever it is. But why does it hurt us as a person in authority to do that? It is not when I punish people that I assert my authority. It is when I understand them and behave differently that I assert who I am. Right. Because I have the authority to do whatever I want. And we're quick to want to use our authority to hurt people. How about to help them? Or to just be respectful of them? So respect has had such a great impact because it also showed people that you cared about them so that you were seeing their entire humanity as they came before you and what it means when you are a homeless drug addict and people step over you. What it means when those things happen and the Judge says to you, when you come back in here, I want you to be dressed like a grown up, like put something else on in your closet, because I know the outfit that they wear when they're running, like when they're just looking for drugs. Come in here because I want to see the full man when he shows up. And they would walk different and they'd hold their shoulders different. You know, the women would paint their nails. And I notice and you could see they did it just because they wanted me to notice. Right. You know, and in the book, I talk about how the woman is talking about how she got dressed up because she wanted me to say something about how good she looked in court. And I thought, wow, you know, there's something that we take for granted, but it's her humanity that I'm seeing. And why not? Who does it hurt? Why not?
Mila Atmos: [00:21:39] Yes, Why not? Well, in your book, you illuminate all of these stories of how procedural justice works in practicality, in real life, right, in the courtroom. And the stories are really touching. For example, the woman who got dressed up and, you know, she also remarked how people are looking at her differently on the street
when she was dressed differently. Right. These stories were so touching. Yeah, so memorable.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:22:05] You're talking about the woman from the strip club.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:09] There were a bunch of women from the strip club that were in your book. I mean, the book is just full of fantastic stories. And one thing that really struck me was that you really talked about their cases in plain language. So we could really see them. We could see them through your eyes and understand how you perceive them in the courtroom and and how their lives actually are, as opposed to the cliches we might read about or see on television, which is basically just fiction. I mean, if you read news reports, maybe not. But even so, I think all of it is a different lens. I think there isn't the kind of humanity that is in other places in the way that you talked about them. So let's talk about how defendants find the procedure fairer when they're allowed to state their views. And one of the ways you made space for people's voices as part of the process was having defendants write essays and read them out loud. Why was this so powerful?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:23:12] Imagine being a marginalized person and being what you feel like on the outskirts of Society, right? People only see you or talk to you because you get into trouble. And finally somebody asks you to talk about something that's important to you. To talk about how if you knew then what you know now, how your life would be different. Right? Because there's value in having voice. There's value also in having an opinion. There's value in being able to tell your own story. And so that coupled with the fact that people would all be quiet and listen, clapping for someone in a courtroom, imagine that. And your story not only resonates with the people in the courtroom. But it explains so much of why you're here. And then the light goes on for you. I would love when I started giving essays, a lot of the young men would be angry. And I don't know why. Judge Pratt asked me to write this stupid essay, and by the last sentence they would say, Oh, I mean, they're writing, Oh. I get it now. Because now they've had an opportunity to be introspective and get the answer. And so that's why the essays I thought were so powerful. And they also gave me additional information to make some different decisions. I was so impacted when one of the judges from Scotland I met and I spoke to them. And a public defender sitting in the courtroom and writes to someone is like, oh my goodness. The judge has asked a defendant who's
supposed to go to jail to write an essay. About how they want this case to be resolved on their own, but it's making the judge think differently about how to handle cases, but also making the defendant be invested in the outcome. Because this is what you said you want. This is what you said you would do. So the essays were just so powerful for that. And again, I started noticing that people would come dressed up on the days that they had to have their essays or bring a family member when they would bring a family member. That would really touch my heart, especially if they were a younger kid who had been getting into trouble. And now mom or a sister "come to court with me today because I'm gonna read my essay" because they knew people were gonna clap. And I thought, "My goodness, when do you get that?" And then I'd always acknowledge who's in court with them, you know, or when they would bring the girlfriend who would write the other half of the essay and I would see through the paper, you know, I can see that the handwriting has changed, right? Go out in the hallway and finish writing your essay again.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:52] Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Well, you used this technique yourself in your book and wrote an essay to your own son. And in fact, you would ask defendants if they have kids. You asked this question a lot. So when we think about our kids and having children being front of mind, it appeals to our better angels. And I think you're right. It makes us invested in the outcome.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:26:17] Yes. Yes. These are people that we have to live with until we are gone. But I was just thinking, like all this work that you do to invest in a better future, not just for these children, but for your own children, for kids. You don't even know. All of the young people who came before me were somebody's kids, right? And so what would I want for my own kid? And I went to get an award the other day and this woman said her son got into trouble and he was looking for me. And he said, "Judge Pratt is mean, nice." And she was like, "What do you mean she's mean, nice?" He was like, "Well, she's tough on you, but you know, she cares about you." And I had to laugh about how you could be mean and nice at the same time, but it was like giving, you know, wiggle room. For failure, for not taking care of yourself and doing the thing that you were supposed to do, and that it still had some impact. Like at least she cares about you. Yet this punishment from her. I know it's because I didn't do something I was supposed to do. So she's at least being fair. And so with the essays I've all written, I hadn't written the one, which was a letter to my son because I didn't have a son at the
time. But it was really, I thought. When I do this work in the world and he's older trying to figure out what in the world is my mom doing? I wanted him to understand it so I could leave the world better for him as well, because that's what we owe them. And not just because they're our kids, but because they're our neighbors. So your neighbor's kids. So I was happy to do a letter to my own son.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:48] Yeah. It was beautiful.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:27:50] Thank you.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:51] I wanted to ask you about something you describe as a kind of shared hallucination where judges become kind of collection agencies, and you refer to this a little bit earlier and find citizens who agree to pay. But actually everybody knows they have no ability to pay. And how this process basically breaks their spirit. We spoke about bail reform recently on the show and similar there too, finding people with no ability to pay. As we know, cash bail has so many implications and costs for communities. People lose their jobs. They don't have money then to spend on food or after school, care for their kids. How do we become so all in on this hallucination and how do we get out of it?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:28:37] I think we have to be real clear on what our rules are. And sometimes people come to the bench from the defense side or from the prosecutor's side, and then you tell them they have to be neutral. Well, they should be neutral and you have to make a commitment that you are going to do this thing. And always, as I said about the ego check. Checking yourself, why do I respond in this way every time I see this thing? And. It requires constant work. This idea that, oh, well, people have to get bail because they got arrested by police, so they probably did it. People in authority. Prosecutors as well. We all have to understand what our roles are. But it's all governed by fairness. All cases don't require a trial. All cases shouldn't be prosecuted. Every encounter with a person shouldn't result in a charge. People say, "Oh, she wants all the killers to go free." I always think that's so silly. Who's talking about mass murderers? And people like to conflate the two so that they have this one argument. That's stupid because we're not talking about that. We're talking about the people's lives we ruined for low level offenses, for making mistakes. Making mistakes. We're talking about the black and brown folks who don't get a second chance, who don't
get what -- in New Jersey it's called a station house adjustment -- which is when a young person shows up and it's a particular kind of case the police officer can make a decision to not process them through the criminal justice system and to send them to a nonprofit organization to have them looked after. And so what the system looks like is, who gets what? Who is salvageable? And if we're not all salvageable, then the system is failing. And so that's why I get frustrated, like, oh, they're talking about, oh, we need to be tough on crime again. Again, that's stupid because we know that the tough on crime laws didn't help. And so now we want to say that a little bit of reform ruined an entire system. Ignoring a global pandemic and years and years of destroying people's lives with this tough on crime stance. Ignoring mental health. You don't have to be a mental health professional to see that after the pandemic, a lot of the people, you know are not well.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:01] Um hum. Yeah, for sure.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:31:03] Just are not well. And it could be because they had to isolate alone because they were already on the brink. The pandemic did things that we did not know it was going to do to people. People who had mental health issues didn't get their medication during the pandemic. You have a mental health issue and you can't show up to the local hospital to get your shot which you usually get. What happens to you? How loud do those voices get in your head? But nobody wants to talk about Oh, no, no. We've just got because of criminals or worse, I'm like, you got a whole slew of people who are not well and we need to be addressing them because we've ignored them for years or we've made them worse by incarcerating them over and over again. So that's what I scream about when I hear about, Oh, we just got to incarcerate people longer. And I'm like, How are we helping them? What are we going to do when they come out?
Mila Atmos: [00:31:53] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:54] Well, I think one of the things that was really powerful in your book is how you worked with Newark Community Solutions and you had this very active way to compel people to come back to do the work, to be assigned work to have mandated court programs in order to prevent crime, recidivism, and then return see you again, maybe write the essay or at least tell you about how they succeeded, essentially
to find a way that takes them away from where they were before they saw you. So I kind of want to move towards a question about democracy. I set out my view at the start of the show that justice and democracy are intertwined. But I want to hear how you think about procedural justice and the context of civic engagement and democracy.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:32:46] So I feel like it's our civic duty to treat people with dignity and respect. When you wake up in the morning, whether you are a judge, whether you have a title that gives you authority, I think you still have a responsibility to treat people fairly with dignity and respect. It's just human decency. It's not at a cost to anyone. I say good morning to everybody I pass, because it's the only thing I get to do for free during the course of the day. For free. We are in the business of restoration. You know, we think we're only in the business of punishment, of commenting on something that's happening with young people and not engaging with them. So this whole idea of democracy, I just can't protect my rights. I have to make sure that we all have rights right, because I only live as well as my neighbor.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:39] Yes.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:33:39] And not just the neighbor who's on the same economic level as I am, but I can only live as well as my neighbor. You can believe or vote for whoever you want to vote for and live in my neighborhood. If I see something's about to happen to your child, I'm going to do something. If I see something's going to happen to your property, I'm going to say something. And so we need to be able to compartmentalize some of these things so that we can live in a place where there's democracy so that we can live in a place where people are respecting each other and treating them with dignity and respect and fairly. They're all intertwined. But we all have a civic duty, a civic responsibility to stand up for one another.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:24] Yeah, Well, so as an everyday person, what are two things that we could be taking away from procedural justice to add to our civic action toolkit?
Speaker4: [00:34:35] Wow, two things. Making dignity and respect a priority in all human interaction and all human interaction. Really making sure that we're thinking about those things even when people are getting us when we're angry, and to ensure fairness and to ensure that we're behaving fairly, especially when we're in a position of
authority and again, outside of the justice system as well. And the second thing that I'm really worried about is voting and the right to vote and why some folks think, you know. Playing this political game around people's right to vote and make determinations about what their communities look like because of their right to exercise their vote. What happens when we create these rules and laws about how long you can stand in line and what you can do for an older person, or the rule that says you can't give a person who's standing in line water. I'm like, How does that old person exercise their right to vote in this community if they can't stand in line for two hours? And as a human being, I should be looking out for them that way, not because I'm trying to influence their vote. What happens in communities of color when you start to cleanse, as I call it, cleanse the voting rolls. But we know what that is. So let's call it what it is and stop it.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:56] Hear, hear. Here's my last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:36:02] Oh, this generation of young people who want to fight. This young generation of young people who just want things to be right. They are direct descendants of their grandparents and great grandparents. Right. And so they just want to fight. I want them to have more information so that they can be lasting change and not just what I feel. Right now. But so that change lasts for decades. And not just, you know, this thing right here bothers me right now. But this generation of folks who just want to do right and see value in doing work around democracy, who see value in doing work around nonprofit, who see value in government work, who see value in making a ton of money so that they can fix society. So I'm really hopeful, really hopeful about that.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:55] Yes, that's a good thing to be hopeful about. The young people today really are committed, like you said, and hopefully for change that lasts for decades. Thank you very much, Judge Pratt, for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on.
Judge Victoria Pratt: [00:37:09] Thank you so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:12] Judge Victoria Pratt is executive director of Odyssey Impact, an interfaith nonprofit driving social change through innovative storytelling and media. Her book, The Power of Dignity, was published by Seal Press last year.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:32] Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones. They're the co-authors of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms. Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones are professors at Columbia University and together they teach a course called "Data: Past, Present, and Future." We explore the little understood relationship between data and power and data and truth. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks for listening. You must really like the show. If you're still here. We have an ask of you. Could you rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:38:42] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.