Maybe you’ve heard the one about the judge who sent a promiscuous young woman to see the face of HIV/AIDS in South Africa, as part of her creative sentencing approach to jurisprudence. Maybe you’ve heard of the way this judge ties the community--the Black Holocaust Museum and Morehouse College, for example—into the sentences she hands down to first-time offenders in hopes of making their first involvement with the legal system their last. Or perhaps you heard about the time the judge threatened to come down off the bench and kick a negligent, unconcerned mother’s ass.
But juvenile crime and family dysfunction are no laughing matters, and Judge Glenda Hatchett is no joke. She presides over the award-winning, nationally-syndicated television court show Judge Hatchett which is now in its sixth season. Judge Hatchet is also the author of the national bestseller, Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say: 7 Simple Strategies to Help Our Children Along the Path to Purpose and Possibility (Harper Collins).
Given even a partial list of her lifetime accolades and achievements, it’s obvious why Judge Hatchett was recently named Woman of the Year by 100 Black Men of America and one of 10 Women of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of America. Prior to her appointment as chief presiding judge of the Fulton County, Georgia Juvenile Court, Judge Hatched worked for a decade for Delta Airlines, managing their public relations, supervising global crisis management, and handling media relations for all of Europe, Asia and 50 U.S. cities—work which earned her a spot on Ebony magazine’s list of the "100 Best and Brightest Women in Corporate America."
As Georgia's first African-American chief presiding judge of a state court, Judge Hatchet served for eight years honing the “creative sentencing” approach for which she became nationally recognized. In an effort to help troubled youth, the Judge has collaborated with organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club and the Urban League.
After her first year on the bench, the local chapter of the National Bar Association named Judge Hatchett Outstanding Jurist of the Year. The Judge has also been honored and recognized by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency; the Spelman College Board of Trustees; her alma maters Mount Holyoke and Emory University; and the NAACP, which bestowed upon her its Thurgood Marshall Award.
Judge Hatchett helped found the Truancy Intervention Project, works with the Atlanta Chapter of Dress for Success, and serves on the committee for the United Way.
The Judge has recently embarked upon an Inspiring Excellence tour around the country. On a tour stop in Pittsburgh, Judge Hatchett had lunch with 3BC’s Ms. Write, Deesha Philyaw and spoke about where parents need to draw the line, the cases she refused to air, and her pact with Atlanta Falcons Michael Vick and Keion Carpenter.
Deesha Philyaw:
Who are the individuals who have inspired you toward excellence?
Judge Hatchet:
I have been so fortunate. My heroes were in my house when I was growing up. My mother was the one who was always collecting clothes for a family who was burned out. She was an elementary school teacher when I was a little girl, and then she later did other things in the school system. She retired as an assistant principal at a high school. My father was the chair of the Board for the YMCA in our community [Atlanta] for years, and was just always involved. So I just grew up in a household with someone always doing something for others. It wasn’t enough to just do something for your own family; you had to look for ways to do for others. My parents truly lived by the rule, “To whom much is given, much is required.” So my role models were right there at hand.
Deesha Philyaw:
So your parents inspired you to serve others, and your work as a judge, as well as this Inspiring Excellence tour, is a logical extension of that.
Judge Hatchet:
We came up with this concept long before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, before all we’ve suffered through recently. We wondered, how do we encourage people to step outside of their comfort zone, outside of themselves, and really give. Everybody has something, some talent, some gift that they can share. So we thought about honoring people—one educator, and one who is not an educator in each city—and saying, “You didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to take these extra steps to help someone else.” And by honoring what they are doing, we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to encourage others to get involved, and say, “What is it that I can do?”
Realistically, not everyone is cut out to tutor a child. But maybe you have time to go in and organize clothes, just sorting by size, for a clothing drive. Maybe you can do a book drive for a community center so that they can start a library. Everybody can do something.
In addition to highlighting [the achievements of the honorees], a number of organizations will have booths there to educate people about local volunteer opportunities. There will be organizations such as CASA; I’m the national spokesperson for CASA [Court Appointed Special Advocates, a non-profit organization which trains volunteers to represent abused and neglected children as they navigate the court system]. The whole idea [of the Inspiring Excellence Tour] was not only to encourage people to volunteer, but to have opportunities right there for them to consider…I want to do more than just pay lip-service. Some of those organizations may get a lot of volunteers tomorrow.
Deesha Philyaw:
How do you inspire your sons?
Judge Hatchet:
I have been taking my kids to shelters, taking them to volunteer since they were little. Like Habitat for Humanity. I feel really good about the fact that they are now doing their own thing without me having to say, “Do it.” One of my sons has been spending a lot of time mentoring kids in his own way, doing talks at high schools, and kids love him. My other son got all involved politically, registering people to vote. He said, “Mom, this is something I feel is really important. People need to be educated about their right to vote.”
So I have tried to lead by example instead of always pushing. And I tell other parents, it’s never too early to get your kids involved in helping other people. Of course, it has to be age-appropriate; you can’t have a seven-year-old on top of a roof.
I tell a story in my book in which my older son really gave me a wake-up call. He was probably four, and we were putting together clothes to give away. I explained to him that there were children who didn’t have as much as we had, and so we needed to share. And I’ll be honest with you, I was so involved in the process and in giving this lesson to him, that I lost the essence of what we were doing. And so we were folding this pair of pants together, and he said, “Mommy, Mommy, we can’t give these to a poor little boy. There’s a hole in these pants.” I mean, I’d seen the hole, and it wasn’t a big hole. But I was so into the “giving back”—
Deesha Philyaw:
But your son was actually thinking about that child…
Judge Hatchet:
That’s it. He’s thinking about who’s going to wear these pants, and I’m thinking about packing the box…He said, “Just because he’s poor, doesn’t mean he should be embarrassed.” So we patched the pants, and then we folded them and put them in the box.”
Deesha Philyaw:
What can parents do to help keep their kids from ending up in somebody’s courtroom?
Judge Hatchet:
Based on what I’ve seen in my courtroom, parents don’t seem to get that there’s no substitution for their time. Time and consistency. The title of my book is Say What You Mean, and Mean What You Say. You cannot tell a kid, curfew is at 10 o’clock, and they come strolling in at midnight, and you say, “The next time you do this…” And then they stroll in at 1 o’clock, and you say, “I told you…and the next time you do this…” Parents issue these idle threats, and their kids go out and get into trouble at 3 o’clock, then they look at me, expecting me to fix it.
First and foremost, what are the rules, and are you consistent about them? And you have to start with kids very, very early: these are the rules, and this is what I expect you to do. Kids are going to try you. They are going to push and push, and the minute you give, they are going to notice that give, and they are going to keep pushing.
Too many parents don’t get the fact that they are parents. There was a woman at a book-signing who said, “If I do what you say do, my kid won’t like me.” And I said, “And?” She said, “Oh, no, no, no, no. It’s really important to me for me and my kid to get along.” Now, I’m not advocating an adversarial relationship with your child. Because I don’t have adversarial relationships with my sons. But I’m not their peer; I’m in charge. We’re a team…but I am the captain of this team, right? We huddle, we work together, and everyone is respected. But at the end of the day, I’m in charge. Some parents want to be their children’s friends, as opposed to their mother or father. “I don’t really want to reprimand her, because then she won’t like me.”
Judge Hatchet:
My mother was not my friend when I was growing up. If I was upset, I couldn’t poke out my lips and roll my eyes at my mother—I could, once I went into my room! I’d think, “I cannot wait until I get away from this house [laughing]! I cannot wait! I cannot wait!” My mother and I laugh about it now, and we’re very close friends today. But that’s because she established herself as my mother.
Deesha Philyaw:
The “I want to be my child’s friend” syndrome is part of a larger cultural problem of short-term thinking. Parents think about what feels good today, i.e., having their child like them and be their friend. But this short-term approach does the child a long-term disservice. Parents have to be willing to invest the time…
Judge Hatchet:
I never missed a varsity football game…My kids knew, on a Friday night, I was going to be there. So there’s this reception at the White House, and it’s really important, and I said, “Unless the President is on the 50-yard line at Charles’s game…I won’t see him. And he won’t see me.” Because you can’t go back and do those things [with your children]. You can’t go back and redo it…
And…money is no substitute for time. Not all the children who have come into my courtroom are poor. I had a sixteen-year-old in my courtroom, whose parents went to Europe for three months, and left him with money and credit cards. And he got arrested; the neighbors called and said there were wild parties…
Deesha Philyaw:
Given your commitment to young people and your work in the juvenile court system, how did you decide to make the transition to a court TV show?
Judge Hatchet:
People assume I left to court to come to TV, but that’s not what happened. I had actually left the court to take a year off, to just regroup. I’d been doing it for so long—seeing abused kids, dealing with drive-by shootings…And during the year that I was off, Sony called me and said, “We want to talk to you about a pilot.” And I said, “I’m not interested. I’m not interested because I don’t want to do what I see on television [on other court shows].” And they wanted to know what it would take, and so that’s how we began with the interventions and creative sentencing, bringing my philosophy of intervention in the courtroom to [the show].
My philosophy is…what can I do to keep these kids out of the system? First of all, what can I do on the community level to keep them out [of the system], so that they never get to me: a whole lot of programs in the community, the pro-active prevention piece. And then once they got to me, I turned my attention to first-time offenders, to keep them from going further into the system. So that whole philosophy was translated into the show.
Deesha Philyaw:
Has there ever been a case considered for your show which ultimately was just either too gut-wrenching or sensational to air?
Judge Hatchet:
Yes, I had a situation involving incest, and I didn’t realize it until we got into court. And I immediately transferred the child to a psychiatric hospital for an evaluation, and notified the authorities so that charges could be pressed. That was one that I couldn’t have anticipated. I sensed something was not right, and I took the child back into my office, and that’s when it came out. And of course we did not air that. Then we had a woman who was so delusional, it became clear that she had some severe mental disabilities, and we did not continue with that show.
Deesha Philyaw:
It’s good to see that that line is clear on your show.
Judge Hatchet:
It is. It is.
Deesha Philyaw:
We talked about what parents can do to keep their kids out of your courtroom. What can adults do differently in their own lives to avoid coming before you?
Judge Hatchet:
Think twice before they do some of this crazy stuff! A lot of it is just not thinking with business sense. “Judge, I loaned him money.” Did you get something in writing? “No.” Why didn’t you get it in writing? “Well, because she was my roommate in college and I thought she’d pay me back…” I don’t care how close you are; when money is involved, there needs to be some documentation. This is business.
And with relationships, everyone wants to run and play house. “Judge, I moved in with this guy after knowing him for two weeks. And I moved in all my furniture, and we break up, and now he doesn’t want to give it back.” And I’m thinking, what did you really know about this man? And the thing that troubles me most is that women open their homes to these men, and they have children. How long have you known him? “We dated for about a week and a half…I met him at a bar.” Did you know someone who knew him? Did someone introduce him to you? Do you know anything about him? You’re bringing him into your home, around your children? Particularly around your female children? What were you thinking? “I didn’t realize there was a problem until he became abusive.”
Deesha Philyaw:
And there are always signs before it gets to that point.
Judge Hatchet:
Of course there are. Just stop for a minute and take a deep breath, and think about the decisions you’re making.
Deesha Philyaw:
As black folks, we can talk about race. We are even willing to delve into class issues. But with regard to gender and sexuality, that seems to remain the great divide for us. We lament police brutality and rates of black male imprisonment, but as a community are we as concerned as we should be about domestic violence against black women, for example? What can black men and black women do to bridge the gap between us?
Judge Hatchet:
I’m really challenged by those questions, because I’m struggling and I don’t really like the trends that I’m seeing. I want to address domestic violence first. It’s almost a taboo. [Women] just don’t want people to know. “I will lie…I’ll say I fell down a flight of steps...” It’s a taboo, in the same way we don’t deal as openly with mental illness. You would go get treatment if you had cancer, but you won’t necessarily go get help for depression.
I wish I knew the answer in terms of relationships between black men and black women. I work every day and am trying hard to give the world two strong black men. And I hope some parent somewhere is working just as hard to give the world two strong women who will be good spouses for them. Because if people come from such different experiences, it’s hard to make a relationship work, if they have different values, different priorities. If one is saying, I need to tithe, I need to save. And the other one wants bling-bling and a Bentley…there are going to be issues. So I wish there was more communication, more discussion about values and what we expect from this next generation of men and women, of fathers and mothers.
So, the short answer to your question is that I’m baffled over these issues; I’m really struggling.
Deesha Philyaw:
With your creative sentencing, you teach young people about personal responsibility. What was your reaction to Bill Cosby’s comments awhile back about personal responsibility and “the lower class people”?
Judge Hatchet:
I was really concerned with the way Bill handled that. I think there were some legitimate points that he made, but I also thought there was too broad a brush, and not nearly enough discussion about solutions. I think he opened the door to a conversation we need to have. Absolutely. I wish he hadn’t said some of the things he said, in terms of the [unusual] names [people give their kids], for instance. I didn’t think that was particularly sensitive. But he raised an important issue, about responsibility. And he was very on target about it. The only real criticism I have of what he said is, “And then what? What’s the answer?”
Deesha Philyaw:
And more recently Bill Bennett spoke about a connection between aborting black babies and lowering the crime rate. What was your reaction to those comments?
Judge Hatchet:
I just hope that no one could be that insensitive and outrageous to have said what he said and to have meant what he said. I think he caught himself and said, “That would be morally reprehensible…”
Deesha Philyaw:
But he came back to, “But the crime rate would go down.”
Judge Hatchet:
Yeah. He had saved himself by saying “morally reprehensible”, but then to say, “but the crime rate would go down”…I thought it was outrageous. I was surprised he got off as lightly as he did. I was on Nightline with Bill one night years ago [laughter]…woooo, yeah. We have a history. We went head to head to head to head. And I was so irritated, because when it really got heated, they edited out what I said when they aired it later that evening. So, yeah, Bill, and I have a history.
Deesha Philyaw:
A little birdie told me that you have, and I quote, “a fashion fetish,” that you go to the different fashion shows around the country.
Laughter
Sony publicist: Come on, Judge. Show her the shoes.
louder laughter; Judge gets up from the table. She’s flossing a to-die-for little black dress and a serious pair of leopard-print heels with peek-a-boo toes.
Deesha Philyaw:
Okay, I want to be you when I grow up. I love ‘em! I just got into shoes myself.
Judge Hatchet:
I love shoes. I have always been into shoes.
Deesha Philyaw:
Star Jones had Payless on lock. Which designer or brand is your dream endorsement?
Judge Hatchet:
Manolo [Blahnik] or Jimmy Choo. Not to be a snob, but it would have to be Manolo or Jimmy Choo. Either of those, I could be real happy. [laughter]
Deesha Philyaw:
And The Gap. You’re on their board…
Judge Hatchet:
Five or six years ago, my big sister and mentor Johnetta Cole [president of Bennett College; former president of Spelman College] was asked to be on their board, but she couldn’t take it on, so she asked me. And I just rotated off the board because the schedule was just so tough. I had to be in California for the board meetings every other month, and with the travel, that was like a four-day commitment, every other month.
Deesha Philyaw:
Who are some of your other mentors?
Judge Hatchet:
Hmmm…Johnetta is really my key mentor. She really, really has been. A big sister and a terrific friend.
Deesha Philyaw:
So, are you in a sorority?
Judge Hatchet:
No…
Deesha Philyaw:
Okay. Someone told me you were a Delta [Delta Sigma Theta sorority]
Judge Hatchet:
Everybody says that! [laughter] Do you know how many times I get asked that? I don’t know if they get confused because I used to work for Delta Airlines. I get that all the time. But I’m not Greek at all.
Deesha Philyaw:
You’re also a sports fan, and on the board of the Atlanta Falcons. Besides the Falcons, who else do you root for? Hockey teams, basketball…
Judge Hatchet:
Nope. I’m a serious football fan. And I’m a serious Falcons fan. The Falcons are going to the Super Bowl this year…if we can just keep Michael Vick healthy. I have a pact with Michael Vick and Keion Carpenter; we renewed this pact from last year. They said that if they get to the SuperBowl, I have to braid my hair (they both braid their hair). And so Allen Rossum, who is our return kick-off player, overheard this renewal, and he said, “Judge, if you braid your hair, I’ll pay for it.”
I’m going to the Super Bowl; I already made plans. And I’m going with the Falcons.
Deesha Philyaw:
Can you talk a bit about your work mentoring NBA rookies?
Judge Hatchet:
I wouldn’t call it mentoring. I do a training for NBA rookies every year. A special training for them on gender violence and rape. “No” means “no.” And there is a high incidence of domestic violence in the pro sports.
Deesha Philyaw:
Do you feel that you’ve reached some of them?
Judge Hatchet:
Yes. I’ve been doing this for 6 years now, and I’ve never had any of my guys get into trouble. I haven’t had any of my guys get in trouble—that I’m aware of, because I ask. And I will tell you, Kobe was not in my class.
I really enjoy doing it. It gives me a chance to get very candid with them. Like about statutory rape…There are a lot of sixteen-year-olds who look like they’re twenty-two; I don’t care if they are in the club drinking. If you take her back to the hotel and have sex with her and she presses charges against you, there’s no defense. “Judge, that’s not fair!” Life’s not fair. If you don’t know who you’re having sex with, you’re taking a risk every time you have sex with her. Are you willing to put your career on the line? Your NBA career is over because you can’t play from jail. Or, the girl’s father says, “We won’t press charges, but you’re gonna pay us $10 million.” And blackmail never ends with that first $10 million.
And you get mad and are fighting with your partner, and she accidentally falls down a flight of stairs and breaks her neck. You didn’t mean to kill her…
We just close the door and it’s just me and them, playing through a lot of hypotheticals. What if she says “yes” and then “no” and then “yes” and then “no”? Then you need to get up. Something’s wrong. I mean, come on. Why are you there?
Can you rape your wife? “But we’re married.” I’ve had guys say that. Because she’s your wife doesn’t make her your property. You can rape your wife.
Deesha Philyaw:
I bet when it’s all over, they thank you.
Judge Hatchet:
They love me. They hug me, they clap for me.
Deesha Philyaw:
I was surprised to learn about your interest in sports. What else would people be surprised to learn about you?
Judge Hatchet:
Oh, in my next life, I’m coming back as a singer. Oh, yeah, man…if I could get up on a stage and just sing. I’d be a blend between Patti LaBelle and Nancy Wilson…
Deesha Philyaw:
You’d be dangerous.
Judge Hatchet:
I’d be seriously, seriously dangerous. I used to sing in the church choir. I love music.
Deesha Philyaw:
Will Atlanta always be home?
Judge Hatchet:
Now that I’m an empty nester, I may spend more time in New York and L.A. But I will always have a home in Atlanta.
Deesha Philyaw:
What book is on your nightstand right now?
Judge Hatchet:
I just finished Snake Walkers. It’s a new novel by a new author, J. Everett Prewitt. The main character grew up in the segregated South, and he’s a journalist who witnessed a lynching as a kid. And he goes back along this investigative journalistic trail to solve these [racially motivated] crimes.
Deesha Philyaw:
What else would you like to do that you haven’t done?
Judge Hatchet:
I want to do a series of children’s books. That’s very much on my heart, and I’ve actually done the draft of the first one. I hope to create a series that is empowering, starting first with a series for little girls. I really want little girls looking at themselves as wonderful, powerful beings. I see so many girls with very low self-esteem.
Deesha Philyaw:
Having someone like you as a role model can make a difference for girls.
Judge Hatchet:
Thank you. I ran into a young woman yesterday who is a criminal justice major, and she was inspired to do that because of me…and I get that over and over again.
Deesha Philyaw:
Well, I thank you for coming to Pittsburgh, to inspire all of us.
Click here to learn more about Judge Hatchett, the TV show as well as the inspiring woman behind it.
