When a person gets out of prison, there usually isn’t much in the way of help waiting for them.
But the John Howard Society of Northern BC has been operating in Prince George since 1959 doing just that; helping people reintegrate into the community successfully.
“When men and women are incarcerated, generally their first priority is to stay alive.” Executive Director Wayne Hughes said.
Although he acknowledged it’s hard for the corrections system to be “both the keeper and the mentor”, Hughes says it’s pretty much up to third party groups like the John Howard Society to assist people with getting back on their feet and preventing recidivism.
At the Society’s office on Quebec street downtown Prince George, Hughes used a metaphor to describe the problem. He says he looks at the community like a big warehouse.
“And you have all your employees on the conveyor belt doing their job. But there is one guy just not doing it; he’s breaking things and slowing down everyone else. So what you do is grab them and throw them in a room for a week. Then you pull them back out, throw them back on the line and say now do it right or I’ll put you back in the room.”
“Well he’s never been taught how to do it right! That’s why he’s having the problem in the first place.”
The group recently received a BC Gaming Grant for its STOP (Stop Taking it Out on Your Partner) domestic violence prevention program. They also run several other programs to help prevent marginalized members of society from being charged in the first place.
Hughes says they funded through a patchwork of grants each year, not knowing if they will even exist the next; “it gets more and more difficult each year”
“Because we are not sick children, we are not an incurable disease, we are not puppies. So as a charitable organization we are really not high up the list, because we deal with men and women who have committed crimes and have victimized people.”
He added that traditional public fundraising isn’t really much of an option, because they try to maintain some degree of anonymity for their clients. He says this all has the group wishing for some sort of sustainable funding model from the government.
LIke many things, there are much fewer resources for someone exiting the corrections system in Northern BC as compared to the Lower Mainland.
But Hughes applauded several other organizations for the work they do, saying “Prince George has a very keen social conscience” when it comes to working with marginalized members of society.
He pointed to the PG RCMP’s restorative justice program that launched last year and the forthcoming Native Court as “proper and respectful steps forward” for the community.
“Because often times when guys and gals are involved in any sort of criminal activity, that day a cop car shows up and extracts them from the community, they get thrown into this justice system… into the prison system. And when they finally come back to the community nothing has changed. There is still that damage that happened to the community.”
He says it’s good that aboriginal communities and the wider society as a whole is slowly gaining the tools to create true restitution and healing in communities impacted by crime.
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