The Power of Dignity: How Transforming Justice Can Heal Our Communities

by Victoria Pratt

Overview

A renowned judge wonders: What would criminal justice look like if we put respect at the center? 

The Black and Latina daughter of a working-class family, Victoria Pratt learned to treat everyone with dignity, no matter their background. When she became Newark Municipal Court’s chief judge, she knew well the inequities that poor, mentally ill, Black, and brown people faced in the criminal justice system. Pratt’s reforms transformed her courtroom into a place for problem-solving and a resource for healing. She assigned essays to defendants so that the court could understand their hardships and kept people out of jail through alternative sentencing and nonprofit partnerships. She became the judge of second chances, because she knew too few get a first one. 

With a foreword from Senator Cory Booker, The Power of Dignity shows how we can transform courtrooms, neighborhoods, and our nation to support the vulnerable and heal community rifts. That’s the power of dignity. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541674837
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/10/2022
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

The Honorable Victoria Pratt served as the chief judge of the Newark Municipal Court, is a professor at the Rutgers Newark School of Criminal Justice, and has taught at the Rutgers School of Law. Her TED talk, “How Judges Can Show Respect,” has been viewed over thirty million times. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey.   

Table of Contents

Foreword Senator Cory Booker 1

Introduction 7

Chapter 1 A Better Approach 27

Chapter 2 I Hear You 59

Chapter 3 I See You 89

Chapter 4 Poverty Is Not a Crime 121

Chapter 5 Reforms That Transform 147

Chapter 6 Transforming the justice System 183

Chapter 7 Reformed Leadership 217

Conclusion: A Letter to My Son 253

Author's Note 265

Acknowledgments 267

Notes 273

Editorial Reviews

"The Power of Dignity should be mandatory reading… Pratt’s book is filled with great ideas for making our criminal justice system better."
 —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Weaving together hope and optimism, Judge Pratt shows the ways that communities and courtrooms are intrinsically connected to each other… Pratt alternates between her own meditation on the judicial system and the stories of those who have passed through her Newark courtroom. Her research, backed up by these experiences, makes her deeply personal, beautifully written debut all the more impactful.”

—Booklist

“Timely and hopeful, this book offers insight into how procedural justice can not only help to heal people and society, but also a judicial system in dire need of reform. An eloquent and humane memoir and current affairs study.”

—Kirkus

"Judge Pratt's book exposes the many ways that the American criminal court system doubly punishes those who are already society's most vulnerable. Her solutions are deceptively simple and overwhelmingly necessary. Written with true care and compassion, this is an essential book for healing our broken justice system." —Anthony Ray Hinton, New York Times-bestselling author of The Sun Does Shine

"Judge Pratt’s extraordinary approach for restoring humanity to the justice system is applicable to business, education, government, and our personal lives. You don’t just read this book—you take action!"

—Marie Forleo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything is Figureoutable

“Judge Pratt is a remarkable and powerful storyteller. The stories of courtroom cases in these pages are gripping, and they add up to something bigger: Pratt’s critical message about transforming our criminal justice system. If you believe in achieving ‘liberty and justice for all,’ read this book.”

—Sunny Hostin, Emmy-winning co-host of The View and New York Times bestselling author of Summer on the Bluffs

"Written with both precision and compassion, The Power of Dignity offers readers an important and rare gift: the opportunity to get inside the mind of a judge as she wrestles with hard cases and no-win situations. If every judge were Victoria Pratt, our criminal courts would be the envy of the world.”
 —Greg Berman, Former Executive Director, Center for Court Innovation

“Judge Pratt’s book is profoundly honest, compelling, and illuminating. It summons all of us, particularly people of conscience, to enact change in our communities.” —Ryan Haygood, President & CEO, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice

"The Power of Dignity is a profoundly important book written by a profoundly important advocate for restorative justice. Judge Pratt reimagines our justice system, and offers an essential and timely narrative about the transcendent power of centering human dignity and the meaning of justice itself." —Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Senior Editor and Amicus podcast host

From the Publisher

2022-03-01
A criminal justice professor and former judge discusses how courts can foster trust among the criminal offenders and victims the American legal system too often dehumanizes.

When Pratt was appointed as a Newark Municipal Court judge in 2009, she quickly realized that her work “wasn’t making a difference.” The people she saw in her courtroom were poor, hungry, traumatized, and, more often than not, from marginalized communities. Courts offered no guidance on the court process, and the punishments meted out to the defendants did little to improve outcomes for them, the justice system, or society as a whole. As the daughter of working-class parents of color, Pratt sympathized with their many challenges. Pratt, who teaches at the Rutgers Newark School of Criminal Justice, soon decided that her role as judge was “to fight for [all those] targeted because of race, poverty, accents, immigration status, or any other perceived disadvantages,” and she began using procedural justice, which emphasized treating every defendant with dignity, fairness, and compassion. In an especially powerful story, the author writes about an angry, cursing husband and his equally combative wife. Both had landed in Pratt’s courtroom on a marijuana possession charge, but rather than offer punishment, Pratt allowed them to articulate the pain that underlay their anger, which had come from losing a child to a drive-by shooting. She then assigned them to a community program that allowed them to receive mental health support and other forms of social assistance. The couple returned to her court to update Pratt on their progress but also to visit her and, on occasion, offer support to other defendants. Timely and hopeful, this book offers insight into how procedural justice can not only help to heal people and society, but also a judicial system in dire need of reform.

An eloquent and humane memoir and current affairs study.

Kirkus Reviews