Judge Frank Caprio, who presides over “Caught in Windfall”, is loved by viewers world wide.
And here is considered one of the explanations.
“After I make a call, it could actually affect someone’s livelihood, their lives and their families,” Caprio told The Post. “Certainly one of the things I’ve committed to is treating individuals with respect, compassion and understanding… and I attempt to put people in front of me.
“I do not wear a badge under my robe – I wear a heart.”
Caprio, 86, transformed himself right into a social media superstar with “Caught in Windfall,” which launched in 1987 on local television in Windfall, RI, and in 2018. began a consortium (ON Facebook live AND Law and crime), garnering three Daytime Emmy Award nominations.
There isn’t a studio audience, only live court hearings, “so we’re very different from other court shows,” Caprio said.
Caprio, a Judge of the Windfall Municipal Court since 1985, has been called “The Kindest Judge within the World” for his empathetic demeanor, garnering over 20 million social media followers and over 6 billion video views.
He credits his Italian immigrant parents – father Antonio and mother Filomena – for instilling life lessons by raising him, older brother Antonio, and younger brother Joe in a cold-water apartment (no hot running water) in Windfall’s Federal Hill neighborhood.
“My dad was a milkman. It will wake my brother [Antonio] and I rise up at 4am and tell us, “When you don’t desire to do that for the remainder of your life, you’d higher stay in class and get a university degree.” It never left us,” he said. “His company had a policy that if people didn’t pay the bill after two weeks, he was to stop milking them – and I remember my father saying, ‘In the event that they have kids, I’m not stopping them from milking.’
“Repeatedly he took a dollar or two out of his own pocket to assist them,” he said. “That is what he taught us – not with words, but with deeds.”
Caprio has a specific fondness for kids in his courtroom. “It might be a terrifying experience… and subsequently I call them to the bench to participateand be a frontrunner in decision-making,” he said. “Repeatedly I ask them for assist in deciding what penalties, if any, to impose on their parents.
“They offer me great answers and are very honest,” he said. “If I used to be yelling and yelling at everyone within the courtroom, demanding payment from their parents (which I do know they cannot afford) and being stern and cold, it could probably hurt the children for all times.”
Caprio and his wife Joyce have been married for 59 years and have five children: Frank, David, Marissa, John and Paul.
Like their father, Frank and David, each lawyers, served the general public—Frank was Treasurer General of Rhode Island and ran for governor in 2010; David served within the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
Additionally they run City Life Productions which produces “Caught in Windfall”. It is a family thing; the series was created by brother Caprio, “Uncle Joe” Caprio and the judge’s son, John, is the producer.
“It is not something I can practice because I never know who will come before me [for a case]said Caprio about “Caught in Windfall”. “So I do not know if I will have 80 people or 10 people, and when people come before me, especially in today’s world, so lots of them suffer hardship. They are sometimes single parents who’ve limited income and have problems supporting their children. So I put myself of their place: what would I do of their situation? What would my dad do in this example?
“I take people’s personal circumstances into consideration,” he said. “It’s amazing that so over and over we have not only mitigated the high-quality and sometimes paid it, but … we have gotten involved in the private lives of a few of these people in an try and help them.”
Caprio stays firmly attached to his roots in Windfall, and has been recognized on his travels world wide (including Abu Dhabi and Italy) through television and social media appearances.
“I actually have an image of my brother three years older than me in my office once I was 10,” he said. “It’s considered one of those days where we rise up at 4am and I seem like I’m starved to death and disheveled.
“I have a look at this picture daily … in my heart … that is who I’m,” he said. “That is how I used to be after we were kids. My father on one shoulder and my mother on the opposite gave me advice on a regular basis. I live there. Recognition [from ‘Caught in Providence’] never made me another person.
“I’m just a child named Frankie from an area in Windfall called Federal Hill where Italian immigrants settled – and that has never left me.”