About SCIR
Transforming Corrections Through Evidence, Insight, and Lived Experience
Our Mission
The SCRI GROUP helps correctional leaders create safer, healthier, and more effective environments by bringing clarity to complex systems. We partner with agencies to strengthen leadership, improve culture, reduce burnout, and elevate operational excellence through a trauma‑responsive, evidence‑based approach grounded in real‑world experience.
Who We Are
The SCIR GROUP is a evidence‑driven 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 inside the system
- The clinical expertise of a doctoral level‑trained integrative health clinician
- The strategic mindset of a modern consultant 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 blend allows us to see corrections from every angle — human, operational, cultural, and systemic — and to help leaders make decisions with confidence and purpose.
What We Do
We support correctional agencies through a suite of clarity‑centered services, including:
- Leadership Development
- Trauma‑Responsive Leadership Training
- Tactical Somatic Regulation Training
- Staff Wellness & Resilience Programs
- Operational & Communication Consulting
- Culture & Climate Assessment
- Reentry & Human‑Focused Programming
Every service is built around one core principle: clarity creates change.
Garrett James
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.
After years of cycling through juvenile probation and a short, unsuccessful attempt at finding structure in the Army, Garrett’s decisions continued down the same path. He was arrested, convicted of felony auto theft, and remanded to the custody of the Iowa Department of Corrections.
Upon release, he moved through a state‑run halfway house and eventually onto full parole. But accountability still hadn’t arrived. Garrett hadn’t changed — he had simply become better at avoiding detection.
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 him with full force. The weight of that truth didn’t break him — it pushed him to make 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 emerge.
Driven by the structure of martial arts and inspired 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, not 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. Burned out by corrections and social services, he stepped away — but the drive to serve didn’t disappear. It simply 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 the academic structure to sharpen his thinking and refine his identity.
While in school, Garrett tried 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 attempt didn’t bring closure, but it did bring clarity. That clarity became the foundation for SCIR.
SCIR was built from Garrett’s entire journey — his lived experience, his professional insight, and his academic training — shaped into a framework designed to give back to the systems that shaped him.
SCIR exists to bridge the language gap between the incarcerated, frontline staff, administrators, and stakeholders. Its purpose is simple: improve the quality of life for staff and the incarcerated, and strengthen correctional organizations as stewards of the public trust.
