Human on the Inside: Unlocking the Truth About Canada's Prisons

by Gary Garrison

In Human on the Inside Gary Garrison takes readers out of their comfort zones and into some 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.

Genres: Nonfiction

293 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 28, 2015

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting stories and somewhat of a memoir by the author. I'd been hoping for more of an analysis of Canadian prison systems, but that part was more tangential than the main content.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read this book I did something unusual for me. I stayed up the whole night until I finished every word. Gary Garrison is an incredible writer and an incredible human being. In this book he details his experiences as a volunteer teaching prisoners in a maximum security prison things like life skills, anger management, and even simply just visiting them. I am so proud of how Gary humanizes these people that are tucked away out of sight and out of contact with families and loved ones. It is amazing to see how sometimes the prison staff butt heads with him, and sometimes they don't even let him enter the prison for his visitations. I have always been interested in prisons and what they do to people, and Gary is able to give such a great view of what kind of people you find there, what happens to them after they spend years in a cage, and why we are doing them an injustice by simply warehousing them. Oh, and after I finished reading this book... I bought a second copy to send to my sister who used to go into Kingston Penitentiary to teach literacy.

[Linda Galway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting but not written very well

[Andrea W · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there could have been a deeper analysis of the Canadian prison system, I don't think that's what this was supposed to be. The raw stories and anecdotes of people who have been affected by a broken system were very powerful and intimately touching.

"Yeah! There's tremendous beauty! If you can take all of the crap out Christianity that was put in there for political agendas and find the beauty in it, there's huge beauty in Jesus's story!"

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book, sharing unusual perspectives - such as that of a former sex offender - that we often dismiss as irrelevant, or sub-human. It is shocking to me that the Canadian Corrections system almost seems to have taken many steps backwards and is actually worse in some cases than the American system. I hope this book will be the start of a much longer and wider conversation.

[Marta Veenhof · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Some great and sad stories from prisoners and people involved with the prison system as guards, law, or volunteers.