"A story of courage and boundless compassion." - Stephen Reid

In Human on the Inside, Gary Garrison takes readers out of their comfort zones and into "The Max," one of Canada’s most notorious and violent prisons, introducing us to a menacing yet vibrant subculture of inmates, guards, and staff.

Through personal stories, Garrison illuminates a criminal justice system that ignores poverty, racism, mental illness, and addiction and deals instead with society's problems with razor wire and harsh treatment. It is a system that degrades the individual and sees inmates as less than human.

Providing a counterbalance to fear-mongering about criminals, he argues that a dehumanizing system generates more crime, not less, and perpetuates another injustice, this time committed on behalf of all Canadians.

Gary Garrison worked for the Mennonite Central Committee for almost a decade, coordinating visiting programs in prisons. With a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta, he is a journalist and the former editor of Alberta Hansard. He lives in Edmonton.

Gary Garrison's profile page