The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney

"Through poetry, letters, essays, and interviews, The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney relates the harrowing experiences of a man who spent nearly thirty-five years in the Canadian prison system. Rik McWhinney spent thirty-four years and four months in Canada's federal penitentiaries--sixteen of those in solitary confinement. His incarceration began in the 1970s, as a system-wide war was raging over the implementation of penal reforms. Though he was physically confrontational during the early years of his imprisonment, resulting in his segregation and medical torture, McWhinney eventually turned to writing to combat the conditions of his confinement. The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney collects his poetry, essays, grievance forms, letters, and interviews to provide readers with insight into the everyday life of incarcerated individuals, amplifying the lives and voices of a demographic that society would rather ignore. McWhinney relays the horrors of solitary confinement and provides a vivid account of the violence and psychological turmoil that he endured while incarcerated. Ultimately, McWhinney's words are an indictment of the prison system, a system that institutionalizes individuals, subjecting them to an environment that manufactures post-traumatic stress rather than fulfilling its mission of rehabilitation and reform. Praise for The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney "This study is timely. An emerging academic demand in criminology and penology is the need to take into account the prisoner (criminalized) as an essential actor in the study of criminal justice and incarceration. This book addresses that demand." --Robert Gaucher, editor of Writing as Resistance Richard "Rik" McWhinney spent his childhood in Toronto and began a life of incarceration at the provincially run Cobourg Reform School at the age of nine. He was an avid reader and animal lover. He passed away peacefully in Regina, Saskatchewan, on January 19, 2019, at the age of sixty-seven Jason Demers is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Regina. He resides in Regina, Saskatchewan."--