Amy Dallas is an attorney passionate about expanding restorative approaches for addressing conflict and harm instead of traditional overreliance on legal systems. Amy worked as a public defender in Brooklyn, New York for a decade with the Legal Aid Society. Now Amy is beginning a new chapter in her career at the Vera Institute of Justice as a Program Manager in the Reshaping Prosecution initiative where she works with elected prosecutors across the country to end mass incarceration by designing policies to shrink the front end of the criminal legal system by diverting cases toward more restorative options. She advises prosecutor offices in addressing racial disparities and making their offices more accountable to their communities. Before Vera, Amy had supported formerly incarcerated community leaders in the development of a restorative justice nonprofit organization reimagining reentry and anchoring a network of credible messengers.
Amy is an alumna of Fordham University School of Law where she was a Leitner Fellow. Amy is also a member of the NACRJ Policy Workgroup crafting policy guidelines on use of community and restorative justice alongside the criminal and juvenile legal systems.
