Erika Sasson has spent the last twenty years creating opportunities for difficult conversations while reimagining how we relate to each other in the aftermath of harm. She is an attorney and practitioner who designs and facilitates restorative justice processes, whether in response to serious harm or to build positive group dynamics. She is a 2023 recipient of The David Prize for extraordinary New Yorkers.
Erika’s work in restorative justice is focused on designing and implementing novel approaches to complex harm, including intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and homicide. She also consults on long-term projects with organizations who want to create restorative justice programming, or who need to navigate complex conversations in pursuit of a healthier workplace. Her work is anchored by her experiences learning directly from Native American peacemakers from across North America.
Over the last two decades, she has worked in and around many areas of the criminal and civil legal systems, with experience in litigation, racial disparities, conditions of confinement, family separation, and the creation of alternatives to incarceration for both misdemeanors and felonies. Outside of the legal system, Erika launched the first neighborhood peacemaking program in Red Hook, which was inspired by Navajo peacemaking practices. She also took restorative justice to New York’s highest-suspending schools.
Committed to ending gender-based violence, Erika directed the first federally-funded national survey of restorative practices in cases of intimate partner violence, and co-created New York City’s Blueprint for the Mayor’s office. She is currently working with Violence Intervention Program—NYC’s only Latinx-led nonprofit focused on providing culturally specific services to Latinx survivors of domestic and sexual violence—to create a localized restorative justice program for survivors and their families.
Erika teaches at Vermont Law School, and is also a columnist at New York Nonprofit Media, writing about restorative justice and public policy. She served for ten years as the director of restorative practices at the Center for Justice Innovation, one of New York City’s premier think tanks in criminal justice reform. She previously worked in Toronto as a federal prosecutor, where she handled drug, gun, and gang cases. She completed fellowships in human rights law in Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and Israel/Palestine.
Erika moved to NYC in 2009 to attend New York University School of Law, where she received an L.L.M. in criminal justice. She completed her civil and common law degrees at McGill University, and her bachelor degree at the University of Toronto in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is raising a family with her husband Misha in Brooklyn, NY.