|
Don Haney will become Northpoint Training Facility's new warden. (October 3, 2012) |
Northpoint Training Center will have a new warden later this month after the prison’s longtime leader switches places with the warden of Blackburn Correctional Complex.
Lisa Lamb, communications director for the Kentucky Corrections Cabinet, said Steve Haney will take over at Blackburn, while Blackburn Warden Don Bottom will replace Haney at medium-security Northpoint. The moves take effect Oct. 16.
According to a news release, Bottom has a history at Northpoint, where he was deputy warden of security until his 2009 promotion to warden at Blackburn in Lexington, the state’s largest minimum-security prison.
Haney served as warden at Blackburn from 2000-2006.
Lamb said the moves are among several changes in leadership at prisons across the state and are intended to use the skills of staff throughout the system.
The Corrections Cabinet recently transferred or promoted new wardens at six other state prisons.
“This will be a good move for both individuals and both institutions,” said Kentucky Department of Corrections Deputy Commissioner James Erwin.
“Don Bottom will bring a great deal of experience to Northpoint and also fresh ideas. Steve Haney has worked diligently to oversee the most difficult period in Northpoint’s history. He has been deeply immersed for nearly three years in both the reconstruction of the institution and the plan to repopulate it after the 2009 disturbance. The knowledge and skills he has garnered throughout this experience will be of tremendous benefit to Blackburn.”
Bottom began his career as a Northpoint correctional officer in 1992. The next year, he was promoted to classification and treatment officer and two years later was promoted again to a post at Frankfort Career Development Center.
In 2002, Bottom went to the department’s central office as a program administrator. He worked in various areas, including contract management and classification and home incarceration and re-entry.
He also worked as security threat group coordinator and interstate compact administrator.
After a year as deputy warden at Blackburn, Bottom returned to Northpoint in 2006.
Bottom is a 1993 graduate of Kentucky State University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
He is a graduate of the Commissioner’s Executive Leadership Program and is a member of the American Correctional Association and Kentucky Council on Crime and Delinquency.
Haney, who started his corrections career in 1989 as the procedures development specialist at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
Before his promotion to warden at Northpoint, Haney was deputy warden at Blackburn from 1996 until 2000.
Haney was at the helm on Aug. 21, 2009, when inmates set fire to several buildings, and about 100 prisoners refused to submit to authorities for hours.
The facility was flooded with corrections, law enforcement and fire personnel from across the state while firefighters battled a blaze that consumed six buildings, including the kitchen and multipurpose building areas.
In the last year, a new 39,000-square-foot programs facility has opened at Northpoint. It is part of an $18.8 million project started in October 2010 that also includes a visitation building and numerous security upgrades, such as security-grade exit doors and locks, new cameras and fencing to control inmate access to the yard.
