About Us

Mission Statement

“Effective, just, and humane responses to crime and its causes”

History

Many people are curious about the name John Howard Society and you may be interested in learning a little more about this famous man and why we are proud to be known by his name. John Howard was born in England in 1726, the son of a well-to-do London tradesman. At the age of 16 he inherited considerable wealth when his father died.

In Lisbon in 1755 there was a great earthquake that left thousands homeless and Howard set out for Lisbon to see what help he could give the people. On the way the French captured his ship and he was placed in a dungeon with other prisoners of war. It was a dark, damp, filthy place where they spent many hours without food and a whole week without any bedding except a little straw. This dungeon was doubtless the birthplace of Howard’s intense interest in prisoners and prison reform. However, he soon managed to arrange an exchange for himself and his fellow prisoners.

After his return to England he lived on his country estate where he improved the conditions of his tenants, giving them better cottages and providing schools. This kind of concern was almost unheard of in his day and shows his independent mind and his interest in others.

In 1773 he became Sheriff of Bedford. This was usually a more or less honorary post, with most responsibilities being left to deputies. With his usual characteristic thoroughness and conscientiousness, John Howard entered into all the duties of the position. He sat in court during trials, visited every cell in the gaols of his county and considered every prisoner’s case closely. At this time Sheriffs, gaolers and other officials connected with prisoners did not get fixed salaries; they just got fees that they legally or illegally extorted from prisoners.
When a person was sent to gaol he had to pay fees to the gaoler, even if later he was found to be not guilty. If he was unable to pay the fee, he was sent to gaol until he paid it. This injustice was the first thing that aroused John Howard’s interest. He wanted to have the system changed so that the gaolers would be paid a fixed salary and would not have to extract fees from prisoners.

In his efforts to understand the situation better, he visited the gaols of several counties and was horrified by the conditions he found. Namely — dirt, dampness, insufficient food and water, unventilated underground cells, over-crowding, human filth allowed to accumulate, cruelty, gaolers dispensing beer and liquor in the gaols for their own profit, allowing men from the outside to come in and carouse with the prisoners to increase the sale of liquor and allowing orgies to go on unhindered.

John Howard now began to devote himself to a searching investigation of prisons. He rode on horseback hundreds of miles through England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland studying conditions. It is believed that he visited every prison in these regions and every prisoner in every cell of each prison. He also went to the Continent to study gaols and found that the gaols were fewer, emptier, cleaner, more cheerful and better supplied with food and clothing. The reason for this was that in these countries the prisoners were put to work and not left in idleness as in England.
After three years of investigation, John Howard wrote a full report on prison conditions in England and other countries. He quietly had his report published at his own expense and then distributed free copies. The impact upon Parliament and the public was tremendous. Public opinion was aroused and many improvements were made in the gaols.

Two particular incidents may be related which illustrated the courage and determination of this man. On one occasion he deliberately boarded a ship infected with the plague in Turkey so that he would be put into strict quarantine in prison upon landing at Venice, and this enabled him to study conditions there at first hand for forty days. On another occasion, after helping to expose conditions in the Bastille in France, he was denied entry into the country under threat of being put into the Bastille himself. However, so determined was he to make his investigations of gaols in France, that he disguised himself as a doctor and entered the country. His identity was discovered and he had to flee. John Howard died of a fever in Russia in 1790.

Board of Directors

Colin Green – Chair

Roque Palma – Vice Chair

Madalene Chiarotto – Secretary

Brittany Mercer – Member at Large

Randy Fitzgerald – Member at Large

Adel Afzal – Member at Large

Jennifer Fleury – Member at Large

Executive Director

Hayley Murdoch-Fyke

705-828-5487

hmurdoch-fyke@jhssm.ca

Staff

Tracy King – Manager of Adult Justice Services

705-828-5670

tking@jhssm.ca

Chase Marklinger – Community Service Order and Reintegration Case Manager

705-816-0265

cmarklinger@jhssm.ca

Sydney Margarit – Youth Justice and Record Suspension Case Manager

705-816-0237

smargarit@jhssm.ca

Hannah Ditaranto – Adult Justice Reintegration & Institutional Case Manager

705-828-5062

hditaranto@jhssm.ca

Natalie Higgs – Digital Access to Justice Court Support Case Manager

705-817-9571

nhiggs@jhssm.ca

Stephanie Forbes – Youth Justice Case Manager

705-794-0904

sforbes@jhssm.ca

Alana Short – Youth Justice Case Manager

705-828-2939

ashort@jhssm.ca

Victoria Doiron – Harm Reduction & Substance Use Case Manager

705-817-9580

vdoiron@jhssm.ca

Policies

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you subscribe to our newsletter, respond to a survey, fill out a form or offer a donation. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or phone number. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.

What do we use your information for?
Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

To improve our website: we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you.
To improve customer service: your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs.
To process transactions: Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested.
To send periodic emails: The email address you provide for order processing, may be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order, in addition to receiving occasional company news, updates, related product or service information, etc.

Note: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

How do we protect your information?
We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information.
We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential.
After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be stored on our servers.

Do we use cookies?
Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information
We use cookies to compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?
We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Third party links
Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our website. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

California Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance
Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance
We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.
With respect to security: We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site. The information we collect is used for internal review and is then discarded, used to improve the content of our Web page, used to customize the content and/or layout of our pages.

Online Privacy Policy Only
This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent
By using our site, you consent to our websites privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
This policy was last modified on March 23, 2013

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below:

JHSSM
78 Mulcaster St.
Barrie, Ontario
Canada
t: (705) 733-0683
e: contact@jhssm.ca

17 Colborne St. East., Unit 109
Orillia, Ontario
Canada
t: (705)-325-6561
e: contact@jhssm.ca