2019-02-26
1 小时 8 分钟Growing up outside of Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of a first generation mom from the Dominican Republican, a dad who kind of grew up going back and forth between Harlem and the deep south, my guest today, Judge Victoria Pratt, found herself kind of in the role of translator, advocate, and champion at a very young age.
And that deep desire to serve at the sweet spot between justice and humanity never really left her.
Eventually rising up through the government and educational institutions, she became a judge, but not just your ordinary judge.
For her, it was all about serving the broader humanity and needs of both those who appeared in her courtroom, as well as those who were affected in the community.
And Judge Pratt gained acclaim as a champion for criminal justice reform in that Newark courtroom, worked with jurisdictions now across the US, as far as Dubai, Ukraine, Mexico, England.
She did a TED talk kind of really deepening into her philosophy called how judges can show respect.
That went viral, and she's now a leading voice in criminal justice reform through her consulting firm, Pratt Lucien Consultants.
I sat down with Judge Pratt, and we explored sort of the moments in her early childhood, the experiences that really shaped her, as well as the powerful moments and exercises that she brought to her courtroom that would profoundly transform the way that everybody experienced it.
She turned it into a place not just where violations of laws are prosecuted, but where human beings who had so often been unseen, unrecognized, unheard by almost everybody else were seen, heard, validated, and not just punished, but given a space to be served, to be restored, to be rehabilitated, and to create solutions that not just helped them, but also helped the society that they would eventually return to.
Really powerful, moving conversation.
Cannot wait to share it with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
My curiosity is when you grow up just outside of New York City with parents who literally have to sort of learn how to navigate different worlds, the southern part of the country, and then New York City.
Profoundly different experiences, almost becoming multiliterate in different cultures.
And then you, at a really young age, start to observe all these differences in justice and in the way that people sort of live and see this need for change and decide that you want to play a role in that change.
Is that a process that unfolds just kind of slowly over time for you?
Or was there something more like a moment or something that happened that really awakened this in you?
I think it grew out of necessity, you know, being the firstborn child of an immigrant.
Immigrant children have to be multilingual and also have to learn systems quickly.
And then also being the daughter of an african american male who grew and lived in this country.