Our Mission
The SCIR Group helps correctional leaders create safer, healthier, and more effective environments through trauma‑responsive, evidence‑based practices. We bring clarity to complex systems by integrating lived experience, operational expertise, and academic research. Our mission is to strengthen correctional cultures, improve staff wellbeing, and support justice‑impacted individuals through approaches grounded in neuroscience, behavioral science, and real‑world correctional realities.
Who We Are
The SCIR GROUP is an trauma‑responsive, evidence‑based consulting firm built on a rare combination of perspectives:
- The operational insight of a former correctional officer
- The lived experience of someone who has been incarcerated
- The clinical expertise of an integrative health clinician
- From a strategic mindset focused on sustainable change
- The innovation of a pioneer in Somatic Institutional Reform, a developing approach that integrates nervous‑system science into correctional leadership and operations
This multi‑disciplinary foundation allows SCIR to bridge gaps between staff, leadership, stakeholders, and the individuals impacted by the system.
What We Do
Our work is grounded in the SCIR Method™ — a trauma‑responsive, evidence‑based leadership model built for modern corrections.
SCIR supports correctional agencies through a suite of programs designed to improve safety, communication, and organizational culture. Our services include:
- Leadership Development
- Trauma‑Informed Correctional Practices
- Tactical Somatic Regulation Training
- Staff Wellness & Resilience Programs
- Strategic Planning & Operational Consulting
- Organizational Culture Assessments
- Trauma‑Responsive Reentry Programming
Each program is built to reduce violence, strengthen staff performance, and improve outcomes for both staff and residents.
The Convict
No one wakes up planning to become a felon. But intentions don’t outweigh choices — and the choices Garrett made led him to incarceration.
Years of cycling through juvenile probation and a brief, unsuccessful attempt to find structure in the Army set the stage for a continued pattern of poor decisions. Eventually, Garrett was arrested, convicted of felony auto theft, and remanded to the custody of the Iowa Department of Corrections.
Upon release, he transitioned through a state‑run halfway house and onto full parole. But accountability still hadn’t taken root. Garrett hadn’t changed — he had simply become better at avoiding detection, continuing the same behaviors without addressing the underlying drivers that kept him in the cycle.
The Man
Time, guilt, and shame eventually caught up with Garrett. When his first child was born, the reality of the man he had become hit with full force. That truth didn’t break him — it forced a vow: to become a better man than the one his past reflected.
Garrett found a trade and began supporting his growing family. As he surrounded himself with disciplined martial artists and highly educated mentors, something shifted. His real identity — the one buried under years of avoidance and survival — began to surface.
Grounded by the structure of martial arts and influenced by the people he chose to place around himself, Garrett made a decision rooted in accountability: he went back to college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, followed by a master’s degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine.
The Officer
Service wasn’t new to Garrett — he had always felt a pull toward helping others. But it was the influence of his first martial arts instructor that transformed that pull into discipline, structure, and giri — the Japanese concept of duty, obligation, and honor. That foundation became the anchor for the man he was becoming.
After years of working in social services, Garrett wanted to return home. With his past owned rather than hidden, and his identity rebuilt through discipline and giri, he stepped into a role few people with his history ever attempt: he became a residential officer, and later a correctional officer, in the same Department of Corrections where he had once been incarcerated.
The Doctor
Disillusioned by the system he once lived in and later served, Garrett left the Iowa Department of Corrections. But the drive to serve didn’t disappear — it waited for a clearer direction.
Garrett leaned back into his education and began searching for a way forward. He returned to school to complete his doctorate, using academic structure to sharpen his thinking and refine his identity.
During this time, Garrett worked to reconcile the full arc of his life — the past he owned, the present he was rebuilding, and the future he refused to leave undefined. The process didn’t bring closure, but it brought clarity. That clarity became the foundation for SCIR.
Garrett holds advanced degrees in psychology, acupuncture, and integrative medicine, specializing in trauma, somatic regulation, and behavioral change. His academic training, combined with lived and professional experience, led to the creation of the SCIR Method™ — a leadership model built for the realities of modern corrections.
