A Dalhousie University professor says claims that conditions at Burnside jail are getting worse despite pleas for change is proof the province needs an independent watchdog for prisons.

Earlier this week, an inmate at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth, told CBC News that he is sometimes kept in his cell for 23 hours of the day. He accused the jail of resorting to lengthy lockdowns instead of having guards monitor large groups.

The province's Department of Justice has said direct supervision is widely considered best practice and allows for early intervention before incidents escalate. It also said it's working to make things better.

But Adelina Iftene, an expert in prison law and professor at Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law, said more must be done.

She spoke with CBC Information Morning host Portia Clark about what needs to happen to make institutions like Burnside safer for both prisoners and staff.

Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

One of the things the inmate talked about was the lockdowns, sometimes extending into 23 hours of the day. What affect does that have on the inmate and also on the institution?

You would have heard it as segregation or solitary confinement, that's basically defined by the U.N's "Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners," known as the Mandela rules. It's a very important international instrument that Canada is signatory to. And it's not binding as law, but ... Canada has committed itself to it, and they are defining segregation as anything that's over 22 hours. So when we're talking about 23 hours, we are talking about segregation or solitary confinement. And that's illegal for more than 15 days consecutive.

It's normally usually done for disciplinary reasons or to prevent different kinds of incompatible people mixing with each other. Definitely it shouldn't be part of their punishment because they cannot be managed as an institution otherwise. So that raises a lot of issues regarding how their rights are being respected, and we do have a lot of reports coming out through courts across the country and from experts on the fact that when they are in segregation, they have devastating effect on their mental health, health care is being significantly diminished when they are in segregation. A lot of people overdose either because illegal drugs are coming in and they're not monitored or they go into withdrawal because they don't have monitoring of going off their drugs.

There is also a lot of concern and a lot of stress because they don't have access to their families. They don't know what's happening to their wives, to their children.

An inmate at Burnside jail told CBC News that despite pleas for change, life inside has only become worse. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

Are lockdowns counterproductive to the goal of safety and security in the institution?

You have to remember that the goal of incarceration is to rehabilitate individuals, especially when we're talking about short bits of time like we are in a provincial system, right? So the thing is you're going to put them in there and you're going to make them badder people. When you put them in there without programming, without adequate food, without proper health care without addressing the main reasons that brought them in prison, like mental health and addictions, and you lock them up for 23 hours and then all of a sudden you let them out, what do you think is going to happen? Of course that institution is not going to be safer, of course that institution is not going to be a better place. Of course the workers are going to be in danger.

Like it is in the community, you treat people with respect, you get respect back. You treat them like animals, you strip search them, you dehumanize them, you lock them up, you don't feed them — and it's already a very vulnerable and sometimes unstable population — you are going to get that back in the form of more aggressive and unsafe work conditions for everybody and definitely without rehabilitation the individuals.

We did hear about some of the change that the province is trying to make, and is making, in terms of food and the direct supervision model, which they hope will improve conditions. What more do you think they should be focusing on?

I welcome all of the changes that they are trying to do. I've talked to people at the Department of Justice and I know their intentions and their heart is in the right place and they are genuinely trying to address some of these issues. But the problem is that you cannot be both your implementer and your executioner and the evaluator of what's happening.

The Department of Justice can't make the rules and be the arbitrator of those rules, said Iftene (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

We need an independent watchdog because these rights need to be monitored, need to made sure that the quality that's being asserted with these measures, is actually the quality that stands to the rule of law and the international standards. We have the Office of the Correctional Investigator at the national level and Ontario has also introduced an external monitoring mechanism. At the moment in Nova Scotia, we don't have any of those.

There are the Elizabeth Fry and John Howard societies, do they in some sense act as the oversight?

They are oversight mechanisms. They are making it better, but they are not governmentally mandated. So you would need something that has a little bit more teeth. I think the John Howard Society and Elizabeth Fry are doing fantastic work. I think that without their work … it would be so, so much worse than it currently is … I think we need a little more.

Is there some room to have the Mandela Rules be given more teeth if not implemented into law?

Yes, absolutely. I think it should. I think that part of the reason why all of the [Department of Justice's] initiatives may not reach exactly the goal that they want to reach is because we don't start by a) listening to the demands of prisoners , which are all very reasonable and they are in accordance with the Mandela Rules, in fact, and the model that they are starting to implement is not always modelled on the Mandela Rules. So the more we do that, the more we are able to ensure that we have a functioning system that is respectful of the law and that ultimately does ensure the safety of everybody, prisoners and staff.