Amelia Singh on Justice, Compassion & Leadership: 2026 Woman of the Year Honoree Shares Her Journey

My name is Amelia Singh, and I'm the Deputy Chief of District and Municipal Courts for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, which means I oversee the nine courts in Suffolk County that encompasses Boston, Revere, Winthrop, and Chelsea, and I oversee the ADAs. There's about 45 of them. The work they are doing, I help them with any trials or motions or discovery. I also help take care of the crises that might happen in our district courts. For example, the attorney work stoppage that happened last summer. I also am the founder of the Animal Cruelty Task Force for the Suffolk County DA's Office, and I also handle all the UNT visa applications for victims of any crime in Suffolk County. The Suffolk County DA's Office, myself and my supervisor, Mark Tomei, are working with an agency called the Justice Innovation Lab and a new startup tech company called Mia, and essentially what it would do would create a totally different system for criminal justice in this country. I was born in Australia. My father is from Australia. My mother's from New Zealand. We spent a bit of time there. My father got a job in the United States. We moved here. I went to middle school in Dexter Southfield in Brookline, and then when I went to high school, I went back to Australia because my family moved back. I've also always just been so interested in helping other people. Before becoming a lawyer, a prosecutor, I worked in politics because I really wanted to help individuals, and I did that for two years. I did some internships at a legal aid and then at the Suffolk DA's Office, focusing on victims of domestic violence, and I just loved helping people. Amitya, welcome to our studio. Thank you so much for having me. I feel so honored. Excellent, and we are really looking forward to March 14th. Me too. It will be an exciting night. So, I have a lot of questions for you, but let us first start with a new initiative about innovation and justice. Can you talk about that too? Absolutely. The Suffolk County DA's Office, myself and my supervisor, Mark Tomei, are working with an agency called the Justice Innovation Lab and a new startup tech company called Mia, and essentially what it would do would create a totally different system for criminal justice in this country. For example, most people think of the criminal justice system as a police officer arrests a certain individual and then that individual is brought to court. That case might go on their record. They have to take time off work. There's all sorts of implications. What this would do instead is a police officer would go to a crime scene, for example, let's say a shoplifting, a low-level offense, and instead of arresting or summoning the individual to court, they would be able to say, here, go and do 10 hours community service, or if it's a substance abuse problem, they would be able to let the DA's office know and we can send a recovery coach to go and help them, and that case would never even enter the court. So it removes some people out of what can be very detrimental to their records. So now Suffolk County population, right, I think the biggest county, right, in Massachusetts? I think that we see roughly the first or the second most cases. Middlesex County that borders us is also quite large, just in terms geographically, but Boston Municipal Court in downtown Boston is the busiest court in the whole of Massachusetts. So roughly like how many people every month or weekly basis put on trial or arrested? Do you have any data on that? So I think the case numbers for last year was over 20,000 cases. In one year? In one year. And those range from all different sorts of crimes. So the shoplifting, for example, but it goes all the way up to firearms-related offenses, human trafficking cases, narcotics. Do we get human trafficking cases here too? We do. So the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has a human trafficking unit that specifically looks at human trafficking cases. A lot of the human trafficking in Suffolk County happens, you know, because there's Logan Airport in Suffolk County and the casino in Encore is very close by, so the hotels that are in Suffolk County. So there is quite a bit of human trafficking that happens. So now let's go back to your history a little bit and interest. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in this type of job? So I was born in Australia. My father is from Australia. My mother's from New Zealand. We spent a bit of time there. My father got a job in the United States. We moved here. I went to middle school in Dexter Southfield in Brookline. And then when I went to high school, I went back to Australia because my family moved back. And how did you get interested in the type of job you were doing today? So my father is an attorney. He doesn't practice anymore. But when he first graduated from the University of Melbourne, he did legal aid work. I've also always just been so interested in helping other people. Before becoming a lawyer or prosecutor, I worked in politics because I really wanted to help individuals. And I did that for two years, decided I wanted to go to law school. We talked about this, was going to be an environmental attorney. And instead, I did some internships at a legal aid and then at the Suffolk DA's office, focusing on victims of domestic violence. And I just loved helping people. So what is a fun part of your job today? So my job, honestly, every single day is usually pretty fun because it's such a team environment. Unlike my people that I know who work in law firms, you're very siloed. You have to bill a certain amount of hours. You're making money. For the Suffolk DA's office, you all have to work together for a case, for a common goal to protect the community or the individual. So teamwork and working with people who are my friends now that I've been there for eight years just makes it a really fun job. And we have somebody worked with you, Jim Bogasani. I used to work with him many, many years ago in Boston Business Journal. He works with you there too. He does. Jim is the kindest person that I know. He's so sweet. So he's on the executive floor because he's the chief of the communications. So we're on the same floor together. Excellent. Now, while growing up, what really influenced you the most? So growing up, my parents were always talking about giving back to the community. I feel I could tell that that was something I was going to do. I think my parents thought I was actually going to become a vet because I loved animals so much. But as I got older, I was working in politics. I wanted to help people. And so that's really what influenced me was having a really great family. And I have a lot of really good friends who also do this sort of work as well. They do nonprofit work. So that's really what influenced me. So one thing is to love animals. And the second, the important thing is to do something. And you initiate you at the office, what you have done for the cruelty against animals. What type of work goes on there? And how did you come with this idea to start that? Absolutely. So the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office didn't have a formalized unit that was handling animal cruelty cases. Instead, what kept happening was every police department would just call me and say, you know, I have this case. It's a really nuanced piece of law. Can you help me with this? And I thought to myself, what if we got all the players at each police department, Boston Police, Massport Police, Chelsea Revere, Mass State Police, and we created a task force with people who were actually knowledgeable about animal cruelty cases, who knew the laws, who knew how to prosecute them to retrieve evidence correctly. So I came up with the idea and I brought it to my supervisor and to DA Kevin Hayden. And I have to really thank DA Kevin Hayden because he is the district attorney. He's very busy and he loves the idea. So he let me start the cruelty task force. And it's been, you know, a really great thing that's happened in my career. So many of us are really animal lovers. And so first thing is, what is this animal cruelty? What is the legal definition of animal cruelty? And what really causes this? Why it happens? Well, animal cruelty, all different statutes, it's actually very broad. So it can be tethering your dog for too long. It can obviously be harming your dog by hitting the dog. It can also, unfortunately, there's a lot of sexual abuse that happens to animals. And there's dog fighting there. It just ranges all sorts of different cruelty that can happen to animals. And there's all different laws. So when you talk about animals, dogs, of course, number one, cats. Dogs, cats, anything you could possibly think of. Roosters, bunnies we've had. We had a donkey one time. We've had seal. We've had all sorts of different animals. Snakes. We can have snakes. That's very interesting. And I'm glad you were doing that because I'm a big animal fan myself. In my childhood, I had an elephant as a pet. Oh no way. Oh my gosh. And then now I have a cat. So it spends a lot of time. So I'm really glad that you have. Yes. I have a 15-year-old rescue pit bull. So he was part of my inspiration for doing this. Excellent. Very good. Now, talk a little bit in more detail about the Innovation Lab. What is your vision? What exactly do you want to accomplish? So the Justice Innovation Lab, the non-profit and MIA, which is a new tech company, they actually brought a couple of different DA's offices down to Vanderbilt Law School. And we had a shark tank style pitch of how we think that we can change the criminal justice system in not just our county, but across the United States. And we pitched our idea and they loved it. So they were actually here last week for a week. And it really is using technology to be able to improve our criminal justice system. I gave an example too of, let's say that shoplift, that person who was shoplifting, they have about 10 prior shoplifting cases. So the officer doesn't think that community services or services are going to work. They have to make the arrest. So they make the arrest. That person is brought to court. The officer lets the DA's office know this person has mental health problem, homelessness, substance abuse. And what we can do for that individual, because the Suffolk DA's office has so many programs, we can essentially have a recovery coach right there day one at arraignment. And that's what a lot of people are not doing. They give services later on down the road, or they do it through a drug court, recovery court that a lot of places have. This would be first day of arraignment, the worst possible moment of someone's life, being connected with a recovery coach to help them with their substance abuse. And so that hopefully by the time they go to their next hearing, they've gotten some help, some housing, they've been cleaned for a while or not, but getting better. And this is probably not the best analogy. But if you think about today, we have Uber Eats, we have DoorDash, we have all of these technologies that you can instantly get something that you want. And they become part of our daily life. Part of our daily lives. So why are we instituting that sort of technology into the criminal justice system when this is people's lives? You know, it's life, it's death, it's protecting our communities. Why don't we have an app that literally will have the recovery coach or whoever needs to be there day one? And that's basically the concept of it. Another portion of it, though, is that it would alert the, the police could also alert the DA's office if an individual had very bad gang violence. And so we can also do traditional prosecution that way. It just helps with communication, getting services right at the start of a case, or the case doesn't even enter the criminal court system. So that's really what the app would do. Excellent. Now, you can talk also about, in today's context, what is happening in the country in the context of ICE. And I know Governor Haley has made a very strong point. How to come across any such cases already, some sort of a conflict with immigrants or ICE here in your area? Absolutely. So in Suffolk County, ICE is present in all of our courthouses. I would say the ones that are affected the most are East Boston and Chelsea. Chelsea covers Chelsea and Revere, and there's just a large immigrant population. And so they are present in Chelsea almost every single day. And they used to, they used to come. I'm not going to say that they didn't. They did used to, but now their presence is, is there almost every day. They are also making arrests in the courthouse, which never used to happen before. It was always outside. So I know that the district attorney and other district attorneys went with the governor to speak about this issue. And so the increase of ICE presence is, in my opinion, I'm not speaking for the district attorney's office, but it can, it is detrimental to our victims. They are scared to come to court. They're scared to get restraining orders, which is civil, but still helps protect them. And, you know, if you ask a lot of the police departments, they'll say that their calls have gone down. And I don't think it's because they're doing anything different. I think people are just scared to call 9-1-1 to get help that they need. I also do the UNT visas for the office. So those are people who are seeking visas for being a victim of a crime or human trafficking. And the numbers have greatly increased. Now, one thing I also want to ask you, being myself an immigrant from India, is there was a Boston incident where the Indians were robbed at the airport or something, $70,000 was stolen, a precious thing. And you had played a very important role in that case. Finally, the money was refunded to them within one week. So tell us about that case, when it happened, how it happened. Absolutely. So the case was a couple of years ago, and I learned about it through Ramesh. So he had contacted me, Ramesh Kapoor. He's just, he's wonderful. I consider him like an uncle to me. And he asked me if there was anything I could do. And I said, you know, there is. I was a supervisor at the time. And, you know, there are so many crimes that happen in Suffolk County that sometimes, you know, a crime of stolen property might not get looked at as seriously, just because there's so many other cases going on. So I was able to make sure that, you know, the DA's office and the police prioritize the case, if there was any search warrants that were needed. And I would say that Mass State Police did a wonderful job in taking care of that case. And they were able to get all of the items back within one week. So we always work together with the police departments when doing a criminal case together. And also there have been a lot of cases of targeted robberies against Indian and South Asians, especially in Middlesex County and all those things. Have you guys coordinated on those crimes around your office or no? So mainly that is happening in Middlesex County, as we discussed. Pavan Nagavelli, he, I know, has done a lot of work with that. And I speak to him. If those cases pop up in Suffolk to help him in any way, my understanding is that it was referred to the Attorney General's office. Because at that point, you're targeting a specific group of people. And I can't say how they're handling the case exactly, but it could almost be seen, you know, again, as a targeted attack on a certain group of people. So the Attorney General's office takes that very seriously, as do we. They just have a lot more resources. And they've done a great job. They've sentenced and everything. So that really did quite well. They've done a good job. Now, let's have some fun. So one question for you I have is that if you want to meet one person, spend a couple of hours, who that person will be that you have really thought about that person? So my idol all my childhood has been Jane Goodall. I was reading her books when I was, you know, very young. I even have her Barbie. I bought it as an adult. I'm just obsessed with her. And I was so sad when she passed away. I think she's just such an incredible woman. She couldn't afford to go to college. And she decided that this was the kind of work she was going to do. She went to Africa herself, when, you know, a lot of women wouldn't have done that. And she was able to research. And I just think she's really influential. She's really a woman who knew what she wanted to do and wasn't going to let any obstacles in her way. And she has been incredible for environmental rights in this country. What are some of the values which really drives you, especially in your type of work? So I think that, you know, being truthful is definitely as an is the biggest value that you have to have professionally. You can never, ever not have truth because the moment that you even small lie about anything, you know, I'm late because, you know, I had a doctor's appointment, but really you weren't, you just slept in or something, you know, you can't even do things like that. And you shouldn't do them because being an attorney is all about ethics and it's all about telling the truth. So professionally, I think that's the biggest one. Personally, I think resilience and loyalty are very important. I think you have to be really resilient to be a woman. I think we learn that throughout our whole lives, even when we're young. And when we go into careers that, you know, for myself are mainly dominated by men. And I work with lots of police departments who are mainly all men. I can give an example. I used to do homicide response. So there's a prosecutor who has to respond to every homicide scene in Suffolk County or a potential homicide. And you show up and, you know, I'm 35 at the time. I think I was 30. You're a young woman, you have a homicide detective who's 50, 60, and you have to work with them. And some you have to show that they should take you seriously, but in a very professional way. So you learn how to be very resilient. And then loyalty, I think, is very important that, you know, if someone has given something to you, you should always thank them. You should always try to give back in any way. So I'm glad you mentioned you brought the gender into our discussion. And you have, you know, you were born in Australia, right? You grew up there. You have lived here in the US. Your dad Rahul Singh is from Indian origin. And now, you know, looking at all the background, how do you look at the treatment of women today? How much progress we have made? And I know that we have a very long way to go. But, and since, again, as you mentioned that you work in that, again, male-dominated police force and all this stuff. How do you look at the status of women today? And what will be some of, what are your dream vision about getting rid of this gender? So I, you know, if this question had been asked me a couple of years ago, I would say we were actually, you know, on the up and getting more rights. I do think that it has rolled back quite a bit. If you, and of course, these opinions are all my own and not of the district. Just have to say that. If you look at all the rights that are being rolled back for women right now, in terms of abortion, in terms of childcare costs are through the roof, and it's causing a lot of women to leave the workforce to stay at home with really no help in sight to any of us. It is a huge problem. It takes us out of the professional world when policies are not created that help support us being in the workplace, you know, maternity leave, lots of people don't have maternity leave. So I think all of those things have rolled back even more. I actually wrote, and again, I, you know, thank Jim and Kevin Hayden, they've always let me express being a woman and how difficult it can be in this world. And I wrote an article for the Boston Globe and Op Ed when Roe v. Wade was overturned about abortion and how I had had one and had I not had one, I don't think I would have been a prosecutor. I don't think I would have been able to financially or have had the resources to be able to focus on going to law school. So I think in terms of just what's going on in the country, it has rolled back for women a lot. And Noor, thank you so much. Yes, of course.