John Howard (prison Reformer) - Howard's Legacy

Howard's Legacy

Almost eighty years after his death, the Howard Association was formed in London, with the aim of "promotion of the most efficient means of penal treatment and crime prevention" and to promote "a reformatory and radically preventive treatment of offenders". In its first annual report in 1867, the Association stated that its efforts had been focused on "the promotion of reformatory and remunerative prison labour, and the abolition of capital punishment." The Association merged with the Penal Reform League in 1921 to become the Howard League for Penal Reform. Today, the Howard League is Britain's biggest penal reform organisation.

John Howard is also the namesake of the John Howard Society, a Canadian non-profit organization that seeks to develop understanding and effective responses to the problem of crime. The Howard Association, a benevolent organisation founded in 1855 in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, was also named after him. There is also a Howard League for Penal Reform in New Zealand. The John Howard Association of Illinois, formed in 1901, works for corrections reform in Illinois prisons and jails.

A terracotta bust of John Howard is incorporated in the gatehouse of HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs.

The John Howard Pavilion at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., is the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital for the District of Columbia.

Samford University, located in the U.S. state of Alabama, was founded by Baptists as Howard College in 1841. Samford's Howard College of Arts and Sciences remains the academic core of the university.