Schulich School of Law

Adelina Iftene

Associate Professor of Law; Criminal Justice Certificate Coordinator

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Schulich School of Law , Dalhousie Health Justice Institute

Email: aiftene@dal.ca
Phone: 902-494-1296
Mailing Address: 
Room 427, Weldon Law Building
6061 University Avenue
PO Box 15000
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2
 
Research Topics:
  • Prison Law & Prisoners’ Rights
  • Criminal Law & Criminal Justice
  • Sentencing
  • Evidence
  • Charter Rights

Education

  • LLB (Romania)
  • LLB Accreditation (Canadian Federation of Law Societies, NCA)
  • LLM (Queen's)
  • PhD (Queen's)

Bio

Adelina teaches criminal law, evidence, sentencing, and imprisonment and prison policy. Her major research work explores issues related to prison health and access to justice for prisoners, as well as evidentiary issues arising out of undercover investigations.  Her manuscript “Punished for Aging: Vulnerabilities, Rights, and Access to Justice in Canadian Penitentiaries,” was published by University of Toronto Press in 2019. Adelina is also a co-author of the Annual Review of Criminal Law (Thomson Reuters). 

Teaching

  • LAWS 1001: Criminal Law 
  • LAWS 2008: Evidence 
  • LAWS 2276: Imprisonment and Prison Policy
  • LAWS 2370: Sentencing: Principles, Law, and Policy 

Areas of supervision: Criminal Justice, Sentencing, Prison Law

Research interests

Adelina's past, current and upcoming major research projects investigate issues surrounding aging in Canadian penitentiaries; the regulation of health care provision in prisons; the regulation of end of life and medical assistance in dying in prisons; prison release mechanisms, in particular compassionate release; access to justice behind bars; and sentencing of older and sick individuals.

Selected awards & honours

  • 2020: President’s Research Excellence Award – Emerging Investigator 
  • 2019: Hanna & Harold Barnett Award for Excellence in Teaching First Year
  • 2015-17: Post-doctoral Fellowship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada
  • 2012-15: Armand Bombardier Canadian Scholarship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada
  • 2011: Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS)
  • 2010-11: Law Foundation Grant, Queen’s University, Faculty of Law
  • 2010: Queen’s Graduate Award, Queen’s University, School of Graduate Studies

Selected publications

  • Adelina Iftene, Punished for Aging: Vulnerability, Rights, and Access to Justice in Canadian Penitentiaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019).
  • Adelina Iftene, “COVID-19, Human Rights and Public Health in Prisons: A Case Study of Nova Scotia’s Experience during the First Wave of the Pandemic,” (2021) 44:2 Dal LJ. (R)
  • Adelina Iftene, R c Bissonnette and the (Un)Constitutionality of Consecutive Periods of Parole Ineligibility for a Life Sentence: Why the QCCA Got It Right and Why s. 745.51 Should Never Be Re-Written, (2021) 69:3 CLQ 321.
  • Adelina Iftene & Vanessa Kinnear, “Mr. Big and the New Common Law Confessions Rule: A Five-Year Review” (2020) 43:3 Man LJ, Criminal Justice Special Issue (R)
  • Adelina Iftene & Jocelyn Downie, “End-of Life Care for Federally Incarcerated Individuals in Canada” (2020) 14:1 McGill LJ 1.
  • Adelina Iftene, “Employing Older Prisoner Empirical Data to Test a Novel s. 7 Charter Claim” (2018) 40:2 Dal LJ 1. (R)
  • Adelina Iftene, “The Case for a New Compassionate Release Statutory Provision” (2017) 54:4 AB L Rev 929. (R)
  • Adelina Iftene, “The Pains of Incarceration: Aging, Rights, and Policy in Federal Penitentiaries” (2017) 59:1 Can J of Criminology and Crim Justice 63. (R)

Service & activity

  • 2020 – present Criminal Justice Certificate Coordinator
  • 2020-2022 Associate Director of the Health Law Institute
  • 2018-2020 Executive Board member, Canadian Association of Prison Lawyers 
  • 2017-present: Member of the Prison Law Advisory Committee, Legal Aid Ontario  
  • 2016 - present: Prison book club facilitator, Book Club for Inmates

Grants

  • Partnership Development Grant for “Mapping the Legal and Non-Legal Responses to Sex Offences in Canada: The Impact of Supervision Orders and Conditions of Release” (2021-2022, $24,934, principal investigator) Social Science and Humanities Research Council
  • Insight Development Grant (2020 – 2022, $68,000, principal investigator)
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada
  • 2015-2017: Post-doctoral Fellowship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada 
  • 2012-2015: Armand Bombardier Canadian Scholarship, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada