Compassion in the Court: Read an Excerpt from Judge Frank Caprio’s New Memoir

Photography courtesy of BenBella Books, inc. and Frank Caprio.

Editor’s note: We were very saddened to hear of Judge Frank Caprio’s passing on August 20, 2025. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and all of the lives he impacted over the years with his kindness in the courtroom. In addition to the excerpt below, you can also learn more about Caprio in our 2019 profile here. 

Although Frank Caprio has long been involved in Rhode Island’s symbiotic worlds of politics and law, it was his empathy as chief judge of Providence Municipal Court that catapulted him into worldwide fame. 

His “Caught in Providence” episodes, where he doles out soft-handed justice on matters ranging from parking tickets to red-light violations, have 2.9 million subscribers on YouTube, and more than twenty million follow Caprio across social media. But after retiring from the bench in 2023, the eighty-eight-year-old viral sensation has hardly slowed down: He recently finished treatment for pancreatic cancer and released a memoir about his life called Compassion in the Court: Life-Changing Stories from America’s Nicest Judge. 

Photography courtesy of BenBella Books, inc. and Frank Caprio.

The book chronicles his humble upbringing in Providence’s Federal Hill, where his parents — Italian immigrants Antonio “Tup” Caprio and Filomena Caprio — instilled a sense of responsibility and commitment to service and education in their three sons. It also shares the stories of the many Rhode Island residents who passed through Caprio’s chambers since he first took the bench in 1985.

In this excerpt from Compassion in the Court, out this month, Caprio shares tales about his beloved father, “Tup,” and how his confidence in his sons and empathetic nature would forever shape his life. 

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CHAPTER 6

A Hand on Your Shoulder

There is one memory I have that helped define the trajectory of my life. From that moment on, I knew exactly what I was going to do, and that nothing was going to stop me. As with most significant events in my early life, my father was at the center of it. 

Frank Caprio and his older brother Antonio helped their father, a milkman, make early morning deliveries on Federal Hill in Providence. Photography courtesy of BenBella Books, inc. and Frank Caprio.

It was a Monday, and it was freezing cold. We were at home about to have dinner, but to stay warm we kept the stove door open and had three chairs around it. We often did that. It’s what poor people did. And being poor, with a house that didn’t have sufficient heat, in a strange way made us closer as a family. We had to sit together around the stove to stay warm. Sometimes the radio would be on in the background. But most of the time, we would talk. 

This Monday, my father stood next to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said to me, “Someday you’re going to be a lawyer. You’re a good talker. You’re going to be a lawyer someday. But,” he added, “there’s one thing: you can’t charge poor people like us. There will be enough rich people to pay you.” 

The words were direct, simple, and powerful. But when he placed his hand on my shoulder, I had a feeling that is hard to describe. Without his hand there, his words would not have had the same impact. It just felt like there was someone watching out for me, that I could feel confident that what he told me would come to pass. 

Every day since, I still feel his hand on my shoulder. To this day, that moment meant so much to me. Its impact on me showed me that the more lives we can touch, the more hands we can place on shoulders to support others, the better the world would be. It is something I strived to do in my courtroom and in my life. 

When a person appeared in my court who was trying to put their life back together after a history of bad decisions, drug addiction, or other difficulties, I would always encourage them to keep at their efforts, often reducing their fines or dismissing them. What I often said to them was, “I’m rooting for you.” I could always see in their eyes that those simple words had a great impact — letting them know they were not taking this journey alone and that others were there to support them, encourage them, even give them a break. That changed everything. 

Sometimes that’s all it takes to help someone who feels alone and vulnerable. Let them know that there is someone who cares about them and is putting a little wind in their sails. What good was levying fines they had incurred while struggling with addiction if that financial stress would be an impediment to their recovery and erase whatever motivation and momentum they may have had in trying to be productive again? Sometimes, a hand on the shoulder can make all the difference, as it did with me. 

As adults, we should all take more time to lend a guiding hand. A gentle nudge can change a life for the better. And it is not hard to do. Letting someone know you care about their well-being and that you want them to be a good person can help them have a better life.

CHAPTER 7 

The Importance of Showing Up

My father taught me that your character and your word is everything. Even as I was focused on myself, on graduating high school and going to college, Tup was always there to remind me of what was truly important.

A young Frank Caprio, bottom left, stands in front of his father, “Tup,” at a birthday party in 1944. His older brother, Antonio, is in a suit, with his mother, Filomena, and a family friend behind him. Photography courtesy of BenBella Books, inc. and Frank Caprio.

When I was sixteen, I worked so many jobs that one might honestly lose track. Aside from helping my dad with the milk truck, I also worked shining shoes on the corner and delivering newspapers. I worked at a bowling alley setting the pins. I buffed cars in the body shop at the car dealership. One time I was working at a restaurant on a Saturday night. I did not get out of the restaurant until 11 p.m. When I got home my father said, “Anthony is leaving for Germany.”

My older brother had been drafted and was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. But he had gotten his deployment orders, and they were sending him to Germany.

“They’re leaving at seven in the morning, so we have to make sure we go and see him,” Dad said. I agreed to go with him. “We’re going to leave the night before and get up very early to see him off. We’ll stay in a hotel near the base.”

The day before Anthony left, we drove down to New Jersey in my father’s 1941 Chevrolet. It was a six-and-a-half-hour drive on difficult roads. For me, it was an adventure, an epic road trip that I got to share with my father. My mother had made us some sandwiches; when we got hungry, we ate those in the car or by the side of the road. 

We found a nearby motel that charged $7 for a room about as big as a closet. This was a fortune for us to spend on something unplanned, so we both stayed in that tiny room.

I was so excited to see Anthony, I couldn’t fall asleep. In my mind, I was picturing going to see him on the base, where he would be with his regiment in uniform; perhaps there would be a band and a parade, and we would be in the reviewing stand. I hoped to see his bunk and get to spend a few moments with him before he went off. That was how it was always portrayed in the movies, so I had no way to know anything different. 

My father woke me up at 4:30 a.m. at the motel, saying, “We have to be there on time.” 

I drove us to the gate. My father pointed to the side of the road and said, “Okay, park over here.”  

I didn’t understand why we were not going onto the base. Where was the reviewing stand, the band, and the soldiers at attention? I thought we must be in the wrong place, but I didn’t want to say anything. So, we just stood there, by the side of the road just outside the gate in the darkness. As the hours wore on, I was hungry, thirsty, and tired. I also knew we had a long, tough drive back to Providence. 

At 7 a.m. sharp, a bus came out of the gates at Fort Dix. My father exclaimed, “Here he is! Here he is!” 

We could see my brother on the bus as it was driving by. He saw us and waved to us out of the window. He was excited and so were we. We enthusiastically waved back. And then he was gone. That was it? 

My father turned to me and said, “Ah, we saw him.” We had no chance to spend time with him, to talk to him and give him a hug. But my father was as happy as could be.

“He knows we came and that is what matters,” Dad said.

We got back in the car to make the more than six-hour drive back to Providence. We didn’t say much on that trip back. We didn’t need to. It became clear to me that this trip wasn’t about us, or about me. It was about Anthony knowing we were there for him.

My brother told this story many times throughout his life. I got to see how important it was to him that we showed up. Tup set the bar high that day and taught me a lesson that Anthony and I never forgot.

Someone once said that “ninety percent of life is just showing up.” I would amend that to “a good life is about showing up for others.”

Excerpted from Compassion in the Court: Life-Changing Stories from America’s Nicest Judge. Copyright 2025 by Frank Caprio. Used with permission of the publisher, BenBella Books, Inc. All rights reserved.