Review of "Inside the Walls" by Scott G. A. Metcalf

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

What a fascinating memoir!

Have you ever wondered what it would really be like to work inside a prison? To hear the steel doors slam shut behind you, walk among convicted criminals every day, and know that one bad decision, one missed warning sign, or one moment of complacency could put you or someone else in serious danger?

Scott G. A. Metcalf takes us Inside the Walls and shows us a side of the correctional system that most people will never experience firsthand.

And wow, is it a strange, stressful, fascinating world!

Seriously, what an amazing, eventful, impactful, and fascinating life author Scott Metcalf has lived!

Metcalf is a former Marine (well, in actuality, ONCE A MARINE, ALWAYS A MARINE) and a decorated Army combat veteran of the Iraq War. He's written about war, faith, military brotherhood, and his experiences overseas. And now, with Inside the Walls, we get another enormous piece of his life story: years spent working inside the correctional system.

How many people can say they've experienced all of that?

There are authors who have to research extraordinary lives in order to write about them. Metcalf has actually lived one.

That's part of what makes reading his books so interesting. Each one seems to open another door into a completely different chapter of his life.

When we reviewed Where Is Your Church?, we encountered Metcalf through his faith and reflections on Christianity. But there was considerably more to the book than that. It centered on a returning Iraq veteran serving homeless veterans in San Antonio and explored PTSD, addiction, injuries, survivor's guilt, loneliness, homelessness, ministry, advocacy, and the devastating feeling of being forgotten by the society you once served. Its idea of "church" expanded far beyond a building or a Sunday service. Church became the people sharing meals beneath bridges, bringing blankets and coffee, listening without judgment, protecting one another, and refusing to let suffering people become invisible.


In Soldiers in the Sandbox--a 1st-place Super Champion & Ultimate Champion in our 2026 Spring Contest--we saw another side of him shaped by military service and war. The book followed Sergeant Alex Vance through deployment in Iraq, including the danger, camaraderie, uncertainty, and psychological transformation that came from organizing his life around survival. But the story didn't simply end when the soldier came home. Some of its most powerful material dealt with what happened afterward: hypervigilance, PTSD, strained relationships, trying to readjust to ordinary civilian life, and then confronting a completely different enemy in the form of paperwork, delayed appointments, denial letters, benefits applications, and the bureaucracy veterans sometimes encountered while trying to get help. Eventually, the story became as much about healing, advocacy, community, and learning how to live again as it was about war.

We're also currently reading Brotherhood: USMC, his work about Marines, deployment, sacrifice, loyalty, and the extraordinary bonds formed between people who serve together. Set against the harsh landscapes of Kandahar, it follows Sergeant Alex Riley and his unit as courage and loyalty are tested by the realities of deployment. But Metcalf again seems interested in much more than battlefield action. There are the jokes, shared meals, letters from home, friendships, sacrifices, and extraordinary dependence that develops when people have to trust one another with their lives. The "brotherhood" of the title becomes a family created through shared hardship, duty, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Seriously, of all the authors to come through the Outstanding Creator Awards, who has lived a more exciting and interesting life than Scott Metcalf? In contention, you could maybe say Margie Goldsmith. Maybe Tony Cointreau. Maybe Frederick Douglass Reynolds, who ironically also wrote a lot about law enforcement. But, man, Scott Metcalf has LIVED A LIFE! And we're blessed to be able to read about it.

With all that said...

Here comes Inside the Walls.

Prison. Correctional officers. Inmates. Violence. Manipulation. Dark humor. Bad management. Good officers. Bad officers. Fear. Friendship. Corruption. Trauma. And the strange little moments of humanity that somehow survive in the middle of all of it.

Inside the Walls is Metcalf's memoir about his years working as a correctional officer, beginning with his entrance into the profession in 1991 and following his evolution from an inexperienced rookie into a seasoned officer who came to understand the prison system in ways no academy or training manual could have taught him.

Metcalf takes us behind the gates and into the everyday reality of correctional work: learning how to read inmates, figuring out which officers can be trusted, dealing with fights and manipulation, navigating the unwritten hierarchy among staff, watching good officers make bad decisions, witnessing corruption and misconduct, dealing with administrators who don't always understand what is happening on the floor, and finding moments of absolutely ridiculous humor in an environment where tension can become exhausting.

But this isn't merely a collection of crazy prison stories.

This book is also about what years in that environment can do to a person. Metcalf writes about hypervigilance, cynicism, friendship, loyalty, fear, burnout, trauma, and the difficulty of leaving the job behind when the habits that kept you safe inside the prison follow you home.

And underneath everything is one of the book's most important questions: How do you survive in a place that requires you to become harder without allowing it to take away your humanity?

That's really the heart of Inside the Walls.

One of the things that Metcalf does spectacularly is show how disconnected the administrators and the system is from the people on the ground: the correction officers and inmates. The shadowy people up above are always described as operating from "climate controlled" or air conditioned offices somewhere far away, rarely directly involved but always making decisions that impact everyone on the ground, often negatively.

Here are some great quotes and passages about that:

"...they remained safely ensconced in their climate-controlled world”

"They saw the map, but we lived in the territory"

"...the ones who viewed the facility through spreadsheets and statistics"

Like Soldiers in the Sandbow, so much of this book is beautifully and eloquently written.

Let's talk about the writing, for better or for worse, because it's unavoidable.

Metcalf is a remarkably talented, eloquent, and passionate writer. He's capable of crafting unbelievably beautiful, powerful, and hard-hitting passages embued with so much emotion and care.

Here are a few of our favorite passages:

"The corridors, once just pathways, now felt like intricate arteries of a living, breathing, and often hostile organism."

What an image!

Elsewhere, Metcalf describes the constant cacophony of the prison as "the soundtrack of this place": the hum of fluorescent lights, the metallic clang of keys, shoes squeaking against polished concrete, countless overlapping conversations, and sudden shouts tearing through the noise.

At another point, after witnessing the gradual erosion of integrity around him, Metcalf reflects on the idealism with which he had entered the profession:

"That idealism felt like a distant memory, a ghost haunting the halls of my mind."

That's beautiful, albeit a bit overwritten and overly dramatic.

And when the personal and professional worlds of the prison begin colliding in increasingly bizarre ways:

"The lines between our professional roles and our personal lives became blurred..."

What follows is sometimes so convoluted that the prison starts feeling like the world's most dangerous soap opera. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. Officers have connections to inmates. Inmates have connections to officers' families. Relationships, marriages, affairs, gossip, grudges, and rumors seep through the walls until Metcalf describes the whole thing as a "symphony of suspicion."

That's a GREAT phrase!

But perhaps one of our favorite passages comes when Metcalf discusses the moral dilemma faced by officers who recognize wrongdoing but know that speaking up might make their own lives considerably worse:

"The quiet agony of trying to uphold a sense of right and wrong in a system that rewarded silence and actively discouraged accountability."

There are sentences throughout Inside the Walls that make us stop reading for a moment just to appreciate how well Metcalf has put something into words.

And that's what makes the criticism we're about to give him so frustrating:

This guy can REALLY write.

However, there are also times when his work is incredibly overwritten and repetitive.

At his best, Metcalf can make a prison corridor feel alive. He writes vividly about the clang of steel doors, the stale air, the fluorescent lights, the constant noise, and the ever-present tension of working in a place where something can go wrong without warning. He has a gift for atmosphere, and some of his descriptions are genuinely excellent.

But he doesn't always know when to stop.

A powerful observation may be followed by another paragraph explaining the same idea, then another metaphor reinforcing it, and then another sentence summarizing what we have already understood.

We've also noticed that Metcalf has this pattern—this really bad habit—of overusing the same words and phrases over and over again. The chief culprit of this is the word "crucible" or the phrase "...in the crucible of..."

He seriously uses some variation of "crucible" 17 TIMES in this book!

Everything is a crucible!

There's "the crucible of shared risk," "the crucible of high-stakes environments," "the crucible of correctional work," "the crucible of countless long shifts," "the crucible of shared trauma," "this very crucible of despair," "the crucible of experience," "the crucible of extremes," and, of course, "the crucible of the prison."

At one point, the prison itself simply "had become a crucible." Later: "It had been a crucible, and I had been forged."

WE GET IT!

It's a great metaphor! The first time. The second time. Hell, maybe even the fifth time.

But by the seventeenth crucible, we've been forged, melted down, reforged, tossed back into the furnace, and manufactured into a completely new human being.

And "crucible" isn't the only example. Metcalf has certain favorite words, phrases, metaphors, and sentence constructions that he returns to so frequently that you start anticipating them. That's where some of the otherwise gorgeous writing begins to work against itself.

A phrase like "forged in the crucible of shared risk" sounds powerful.

If you keep forging everything in crucibles, eventually the metaphor loses its heat.

What's funny is we're reading the author's other book about the US Marine Corp, and the problem is there are well. Crucible this and crucible that. Forged in the crucible of the crucible in the burning heart of the crucible crucible.

(As an aside, Dr. Clifton Wilcox has the same issue with his books. He'll just keep writing "a testament to the..." over and over and over again. Everything is a testament to something or other. It gets really annoying after a while. Again, it's a very similar issue with Metcalf's writing).

These are important themes, and many of them are beautifully expressed. But sometimes the writing becomes so determined to make us feel the importance of a moment that it actually weakens the moment.

Metcalf is often at his best when he simply tells us what happened and lets the story speak for itself.

And, thankfully, there are so many great real-life stories in here. There are funny, amusing ones. And there are cautionary, educational ones.

On the funny/amusing side, there's the saga of the Sock Bandit. There's the inmate who worked on a banana art sculpture for months only to have it confiscated as contraband, making it an inside joke between him and the guard. There's the dust bunny episode, which you just have to read for yourself.

Then, of course, there are the more serious, cautionary, and educational stories.

There's the story of Silas, the master manipulator who knows exactly how to exploit loopholes, pit people against each other, file grievances, intimidate others, and generally make everyone's lives miserable while somehow avoiding any serious consequences. The officers document everything he's doing and repeatedly bring it to management, only to hear things like "Let's not make him a martyr" or that dealing with him would be "too risky" or require "too much paperwork."

Some of these stories get considerably darker. Metcalf writes about officers crossing the line from necessary force into outright brutality. In one especially disturbing example, an inmate named Carlos "Spider" Rodriguez is already handcuffed while being escorted back to his cell when two officers decide to "teach him a lesson." According to Metcalf, they kick him repeatedly in the ribs and back even after he is subdued. The official report describes it as "necessary force to control a resisting inmate," but Metcalf makes clear that what he and others witnessed was something much uglier.

There is another example involving Officer Davies, who loses his temper after being provoked by an inmate and violently shoves him into a wall. A civilian contractor witnesses the incident, and surveillance footage confirms what happened. Davies is placed on administrative leave. Stories like these are important because Metcalf does not portray correctional officers as automatically heroic simply because he was one himself. Some officers are brave, compassionate, and highly competent. Others make terrible decisions, abuse their authority, or simply should not be doing the job.

The book also spends a lot of time on the complicated personal relationships that can develop inside a correctional institution. Metcalf describes a new female officer who is barely twenty-two and quickly becomes a favorite of the shift commander. She begins receiving easier assignments, control-room posts, administrative duties, and opportunities that more experienced officers are not getting. The commander spends a noticeable amount of time around her, and the other officers begin to question why a brand-new employee is being treated so differently. Metcalf does not definitively tell us what happened between them, but the perception of favoritism becomes damaging on its own.

That is one of his larger points about prison culture. In an environment where officers have to depend on one another for their safety, trust matters enormously. If people begin to believe that assignments, discipline, training, promotions, or opportunities depend more on personal relationships than merit, resentment spreads quickly. That kind of favoritism can damage morale, weaken confidence in management, and create another layer of tension in an already stressful workplace.

The relationships between officers and inmates can become even more dangerous. Metcalf discusses officers developing personal attachments to inmates, including a female officer who was reportedly in a relationship with a high-ranking gang member. The concern is not simply that the relationship violates professional boundaries. It also creates obvious questions about leverage, information, favors, manipulation, and security. Once an officer becomes personally compromised, everyone around that officer can potentially be affected.

One of the strongest cautionary examples involves Officer Thompson. Thompson develops what appears to be a genuine mentoring relationship with an inmate nearing release and believes he is helping the man prepare to return to society. Over time, however, he allows the relationship to become too personal and gives the inmate his private phone number. The inmate later abuses that access and uses it to help coordinate further criminal activity after his release. Thompson is investigated and loses his job. What makes the story effective is that his mistake does not appear to begin with corruption or malice. It begins with poor boundaries and what may have been good intentions.

Then there is Officer Ramirez, one of the most tragic stories in the book. Ramirez is young, eager, married, and expecting a baby. Metcalf describes him as someone who still believes he can make a difference and who is genuinely interested in learning the job. During what begins as a routine inmate escort, violence suddenly breaks out. There is a struggle, shouted commands, confusion, and then Ramirez goes down. He dies in the line of duty.

The aftermath is one of the book's most affecting sections. Metcalf describes the paperwork and debriefings, the unusual silence in the break room, Ramirez's untouched locker, and his grieving wife at the memorial service. The story reminds us that, underneath all the strange personalities, administrative dysfunction, dark humor, gossip, misconduct, and absurdity, this is still a dangerous profession in which people can lose their lives.

That balance is one of the strongest parts of Inside the Walls. The funny stories provide relief. The cautionary stories show how quickly careers can be destroyed by bad judgment. The darker stories show the emotional and physical costs of the profession. Together, they make the prison feel less like an abstract institution and more like a complicated, volatile world populated by deeply flawed human beings.

Check it out on Amazon!