Batt Chews Out Prison Boss Inmate Punished After Charging Guard With Sex Abuse

Gov. Phil Batt has scolded the state Department of Correction for punishing an inmate because he complained to a newspaper about being sexually molested by a guard.

“The governor doesn’t think that they handled this incident correctly,” Batt spokeswoman Amy Kleiner said Monday.

“He’s asked the department to be extremely conscientious about what they’re doing.”

Batt’s remarks came during a telephone conversation he had with Correction Director James Spalding.

The conversation followed a decision on Friday by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in a lawsuit filed by inmate Mark D. Tapp.

Tapp, 26, accused the department of throwing him into solitary confinement because he complained to The Idaho Statesman about the agency’s employment of guard Roy M. Redifer of Nampa.

Kleiner said Batt continued to have faith in the department and understood it has a “difficult line to walk” in balancing inmates’ rights with the need to maintain security.

“I think that the governor feels that Director Spalding has a difficult job and for every 500 cases that he handles, there will be some problems,” Kleiner said.

“But he also feels that he handles many of them correctly, if you look at the amount of disciplinary actions or reports that are taken every day.”

In April, Batt took the department to task for its handling of the John Pribble case, where a guard raped or sexually molested as many as 11 women at the state’s maximum security penitentiary.

Tapp claims Redifer, 51, made sexual advances toward him at a prison south of Boise earlier this year.

The Correction Department continues to investigate the inmate’s allegation and the FBI has begun a similar inquiry.

The department denied it was seeking retaliation.

It said it punished Tapp for refusing to cooperate in its internal investigation of Redifer by failing to submit to a polygraph examination.