Study calls for Nova Scotia prisons to ban close confinement of more than 20 hours

Cells are seen during a media tour of renovations at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Halifax on Tuesday, May 15, 2018.

A new study is calling on the Nova Scotia government to end close confinement for periods of more than 20 hours per day at correctional facilities.

The study, which was conducted by Dr. Laura Beach with Mobile Outreach Street Health, interviewed 21 people who had been incarcerated in a provincial correctional facility at least once in the last five years.

One of the study’s 32 recommendations calls for stronger policies around the limits of close confinement.

“The impact of conditions of confinement on mental health and wellbeing was a prevalent theme across interviews,” the study reads. “Participants described overpopulated facilities, overcrowded units, and an overreliance on institutional lockdown – a widespread and well-documented phenomenon in Nova Scotia’s jails.”

Two years ago, the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia ruled it illegal to lock down prisoners in provincial jails due to staff shortages.

The study said it focused on mental health and substance use in incarceration, and the lack of assessment and support for those issues.

The study noted Nova Scotia spends more than $300 per person in adult custody daily, with total costs on correctional services nearly reaching $100 million annually.

Many of the participants in the study said they were incarcerated before the age of 20 and some said they could not remember how many times they had been incarcerated.

One person who was interviewed said he spent 15 months in lockdown out of a 22-month sentence in Burnside.

The study also calls for all correctional staff to receive adequate mental health and addictions training and for all peace officers to undergo trauma-informed training.

Other recommendations in the study include:

• in-custody peer support programs for mental health and addictions
• a minimum of one full-time position for a health-care provider with addictions expertise on the mental health team
• decrease wait times for physicians in custody
• written justification for all in-custody prescriptions that do not follow established practice guidelines
• abolish the policy restricting the prescription of Opioid Agonist Therapy to prisoners with substance use disorders
• integrate occupational therapy into rehabilitative programming

Last month, the Death in Custody Review Committee called for a formal suicide prevention strategy and implementation plan for Correctional Services in Nova Scotia.

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