Judge Baer presided over the experimental re-entry court of the federal district court for the Southern District of New York. He brought to that court and brings to this book insight from his extraordinary experience in taking responsibility at every stage of the criminal law process, from federal prosecutor to defense attorney to judge presiding at trial and sentencing. Judge Baer recounts the moving lessons learned from his re-entry court experience. He argues that public safety and our sense of humanity require that we drastically improve prisoner sentencing and re-entry into society to reduce the high rate of recidivism.
About the Author: Harold Baer, Jr. was a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1994 until his passing in 2014. In 1992, he resigned from the New York State Supreme Court after serving on that bench for ten years. For two years before his induction as a District Court judge, he was the executive judicial officer at JAMS/Endispute (Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services), where he supervised the staff and other mediators and arbitrators and did dispute resolution himself. For a decade before his election to the Supreme Court, he was in charge of litigation in a Wall Street law firm. In the 1960s, he was an assistant United States attorney and headed the Organized Crime and Racketeering Unit of that office; he returned in 1970 as first assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the Criminal Division. Judge Baer served on the five-person Mollen Commission, investigating police corruption from 1992 through 1994. After Mayor John V. Lindsay formed the Civilian Complaint Review Board of the New York City Police Department, Judge Baer was its first executive director. He was active in New York state, city, and county bar associations, chairing committees for each, as well as serving as a trustee of the Federal Bar Council. He was the founder of the Network of Bar Leaders and president of the New York County Lawyers Association. In addition to hundreds of published opinions, he wrote extensively on legal topics, with some fifty books, pamphlets, and articles to his credit. His most recent book, titled Judges Under Fire: Human Rights, Independent Judges, and the Rule of Law, was published in 2011 by the American Bar Association. He graduated, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, fromHobart College and, in 1957, from the Yale Law School.