Staci Pratt’s office does not look like the office of most lawyers. On the bulletin board, she has a flyer for an upcoming action with the Poor People’s Campaign, a front-page article about a stay of execution, and a calendar of upcoming meditation sessions. Then again, Staci’s practice is not like most attorneys’ practices. She has woven together her legal expertise and social work skill and value base into a potent combination that she wields in pursuit of her primary mission: to fight injustice.
Staci went to law school because she wanted to change the world. However, she found that practicing corporate law satisfied her intellectual curiosity but not her soul. She knew something was missing, and that “something” felt like social work. Staci pursued an MSW to better understand problems as people were experiencing them, to then use these insights to deconstruct systemic barriers. While she approached the combination of law and social work from a different perspective than some dual-degree practitioners, who often study law to increase their capacity to shape policy, her career has leveraged that same combination of hands-on engagement with affected populations and a passion for system change.
In her first social work job, Staci worked as a liaison for the homeless community, helping families navigate school systems. She used her active listening skills to better understand the barriers experienced by youth who are homeless and used her relationship-building and advocacy skills to change policies that stood in the way of their success. An early success was the enactment of a rule that gave school district homeless liaisons the authority to waive the requirement for providing parents’ financial information to qualify for federal financial aid for college, which provided a major aid to students’ aspirations to leave poverty through education.
Staci’s next job was working on litigation and advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Nevada. There, she represented LGBTQ+ individuals discriminated against in state law and contributed to shifting legal realities for sexual minorities. Passionate about standing with and standing up for many oppressed populations, Staci developed a keen sense of openings that would allow her to right wrongs. As she fielded calls for help on the ACLU’s voicemail, she listened to dozens of stories related to claims of cruel and unusual punishment within prisons and jails. Although she won a case on behalf of a pregnant prisoner ankle-shackled during childbirth, Staci agonized over the conflicts between her cherished social work values and the way the nation treats those who are incarcerated. As she surveyed the criminal justice system in the country, looking for patterns of inequities and windows of opportunity, she was struck by Missouri’s ranking as the state with the highest per capita rate of capital punishment. She felt a call to return to Kansas City and assume the Executive Director position at Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (MADP), where, as she describes it, her work on capital punishment takes aim at the “linchpin of economic and racial oppression.”
At MADP, Staci draws on both her legal training and her repertoire of social work skills to highlight the moral and procedural injustices of capital punishment. She argues and organizes against the death penalty not only to save lives, but also because it is a particularly vivid example of what is unfair about the criminal justice system. MADP lobbies state lawmakers to change criminal justice policy and builds alliances with policymakers across partisan divides. Staci and her social work practicum students produce research that exposes connections between historic racial violence and capital sentencing. They craft narratives of death row exonerees to draw attention to the very real likelihood of erroneous capital sentencing. They host events where those harmed by racial bias in the criminal justice system can tell their own stories. Several times a year, MADP mobilizes a grassroots constituency to oppose executions and put political pressure on decision-makers. Using a combination of social media, public speaking engagements, and coalition-building, MADP generated more than 270,000 calls to the Missouri Governor for one specific, impending execution—a show of force that the governor cited in his explanation for granting a stay.
Staci recognizes that her law degree can provide “instant credibility” with lawmakers, defense attorneys, and other players in the legal system. At the same time, she saw that law only gave her some of the tools that she needed in order to change the world as she wanted. Her social work training and experiences help her make the connections across differences necessary to catalyze long-term societal transformation. While she often draws on her ability to read and understand laws and legal decisions, Staci is always the social worker. Relationships are the core of her work, and she uses her ability to connect every day. She builds alliances with organizations that share her commitment to racial justice: the Black Archives (a new partnership to memorialize victims of lynching and force a reckoning with the nation’s legacy of racial violence); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where she serves on the state Board and the Executive Director serves on her Board; and various religious orders and congregations. She makes a compelling case to prospective donors to secure the resources needed to sustain MADP and its campaigns. In some of the most difficult parts of her work, she reaches out to victims’ families to be present in their darkest moments and to help them articulate how they envision justice after their tragedy. She is tenacious, persistent, and kind—and it is making a difference.
To cope with the challenges—especially when they lose an appeal—Staci practices self-care and connects with a robust network of peers in the death penalty abolition movement. What sustains her the most, though, is the progress. After a horrific recent murder of a child, she was inspired by the victim’s family’s collaboration with the family of the defendant. They made a powerful team, working together to strengthen the state’s Amber Alert system for child abductions. A juror who shared her experience on a capital case engaged audiences in rural communities on a speaking tour, and many participants reported having new concerns about the exercise of capital punishment. A Missouri jury has not returned a death sentence since 2013, and current polling suggests that racial inequities in the criminal justice system are more salient for more Americans.
Nothing in either of her chosen professions is instantaneous. Appeals take years and social change can require generations. Staci’s work involves planting seeds, opening minds, laying precedents—and inviting others to join in the work. The wheels of justice turn slowly; but they will turn—just not by themselves. That is where Staci, and her approach to social work and law, come in.