Batt Deflects Criticism Of Corrections Chief State Would Be The Loser, Governor Says

Gov. Phil Batt contends the state would be the loser if Idaho Department of Corrections Director James Spalding were driven from office by questions about his handling of a young killer kept in a Wallace jail.

Batt late last week acknowledged “serious problems” in allowing murderer Steve Waddell to walk the streets of Wallace with a deputized maintenance man with no firearms training. Waddell was convicted of killing his high school sweetheart in Canyon County.

“Director Spalding perhaps should have known about Mr. Waddell having too much freedom,” Batt said.

Spalding late last month ordered Waddell and all other state inmates from county jails to prisons.

Until then, seven counties depended on prison inmates known as trusties to keep up daily operations not only of the jails but of the counties themselves.

Kootenai County was tops among them. It had 12 of the state’s 27 trusties doing everything from serving jail inmates their food to changing the oil in county cars.

Now the county is scrambling to find replacement workers to serve hundreds of meals and wash tons of clothes.

Three of the five county shop workers were trusties. Now that they are being shipped back to prison, there are only two mechanics to care for 140 county vehicles.

Officials worry that the Department of Corrections might be overreacting and overlooking the benefits of the trusty program.

“I think Mr. Spalding does a remarkable job out there,” Batt said Friday. “If we point out too many problems that an omniscient person should have known, and drive him out of the job, I think the state is going to be the loser.”

But even as Batt defended Spalding, his office made public a letter sent to the director six months ago in which Batt expressed “concern and dismay” over the department’s internal review of a former guard’s sexual abuse of female inmates at a Boise-area prison.

State investigators have concluded their probe into guard John Pribble’s sexual abuse of four female inmates at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution and turned their findings over to the Ada County prosecutor’s office.

Pribble, 47, is serving 1-1/2 to 10 years in prison under a state law that makes sexual contact in such cases a felony. But in his letter to Spalding, Batt criticized the department for conducting “only a cursory review” of the Pribble case, and asked for an immediate, full-scale investigation.

Since Pribble’s guilty plea, three other women have joined the original four in demanding as much as $2 million. The state already has settled with some of the women and is pursuing negotiations with the others.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE FALLOUT Kootenai County used 12 of the state’s 27 trusties in jobs ranging from laundry to serving jail inmates their food to changing the oil in county cars. Now the county is scrambling to find replacement workers.