Judge approves B.C. inmate’s class action over ‘inhumane’ prison isolation during pandemic [Video]

As chair of the inmate wellness committee at his prison, Dean Christopher Roberts was allowed to go cell to cell at Mission Institution to speak with inmates through the bars during some of the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The men in the medium-security facility in Mission, B.C., were being isolated in their rooms to prevent the spread of COVID-19. By April 2020, they were allowed out of their cells for 20 minutes a day — time that Roberts claims they could choose to use only for a shower or a phone call to family.

“Within the first month of solitary confinement some men were showing me, [as] I went door to door, where they had developed bed sores and body pain from being sedentary and lying in bed all day,” he wrote in an affidavit filed in B.C. Supreme Court.

“Sadly, I encountered some men who had taken …