Benjamin Perrin is a professor at the University of British Columbia, Peter A. Allard School of Law and national best-selling author. He has served in the Prime Minister’s Office as in-house legal counsel and lead policy advisor on criminal justice and public safety. He was also a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada.
His books include Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial (UTP, 2023), Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada’s Opioid Crisis (Penguin Random House, 2020), Victim Law: The Law of Victims of Crime in Canada (Thomson Reuters, 2017) and Criminal Law: Canadian Law, Indigenous Laws & Critical Perspectives (CanLII, 2023) - a free open-access textbook for law students.
In recent years, Ben was confronted with childhood and intergenerational trauma, addiction, mental health challenges, and disability in the lives of people close to him and himself. In this journey, he found freedom and peace in Jesus Christ.
Changes in his heart have meant that his research has increasingly focussed in recent years on people our society treats poorly and unjustly, including victims of crime, people who use drugs, people with mental health disorders, people experiencing poverty and homelessness, people who are incarcerated, as well as Indigenous, Black and people of colour.