Vera Institute of Justice

James Caron Butler is an American former professional basketball player and is currently the Assistant Coach of the NBA’s Miami Heat. During a 14-year career he played for nine teams: the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, Washington Wizards, Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Detroit Pistons, and Sacramento Kings. He played in Washington for six years, the majority of his career, and refers to it as his “second basketball home”. Butler is a two-time NBA All-Star and the 2002 Big East Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year. Butler announced his retirement from the NBA on February 6, 2018.

Butler was born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin and has a background with the criminal justice system. Before he was fifteen he had been arrested over a dozen times for minor offenses, and at fifteen he was arrested and sentenced to eighteen months for firearms and cocaine possession. While he was incarcerated, he was taken to the Racine Correctional Institution, an adult facility, where he served two months before being transferred to the Ethan Allen School for Boys, a juvenile detention center and reform school. During his time at the Racine Correctional Institution, he spent two weeks in solitary confinement.

In 2015, Butler released an autobiography entitled Tuff Juice: My Journey from the Streets to the NBA. He hopes that sharing his story and experiences with the criminal justice system will inspire other basketball players to do the same, and through encouraging dialogue, he hopes to play a part in changing the policing problems in the United States today.

Butler joined Vera's Board of Trustees in 2019.