LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The Arkansas corrections system has a new secretary.
The board voted Tuesday in a unanimous vote in favor of hiring former state Senator Eddie Joe Williams as interim corrections secretary. The position had been vacant after the board voted earlier in January to end the employment of then-Secretary Joe Profiri.
Williams, from Cabot, served in the legislature from 2011 to 2017, including as senate minority leader from 2013 to 2014. He was appointed to the Southern States Energy Board by President Donald Trump in 2017.
Profiri had been appointed to the position by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a member of her incoming cabinet. He became a center point of a conflict between the board and the governor’s office as adding beds to the state prison system became an issue.
Sanders, joined by Attorney General Tim Griffin and Profiri held a news conference last November taking the board to task for its not allowing 500 additional beds to be added to the state prison system in order to move state inmates currently being held in county jails due to state capacity.
At the time, the governor’s office had asked for 630 additional beds, but the board had only approved 130.
Shortly after the Nov. 17, 2023 news conference, board chairman Benny Magness wrote an open letter to Sanders explaining its decision to limit the new beds based upon staffing shortages and concerns with Profiri’s dismissive interactions with the board.
As the back-and-forth between the governor’s office grew — which included a court case that included an injunction in favor of the board — the board voted to suspend Profiri. A vote at its next meeting on Jan. 10 led to the board voting to fire Profiri, who was immediately hired by the governor’s office as a consultant.
The court case, still under a temporary injunction, is to determine if a state law passed by the legislature in 2023 that moved supervision of the Secretary of Corrections from the board to the governor’s office was constitutional. The temporary injunction led to the control remaining with the board, giving it the authority to fire Profiri.
The case is due for a full hearing later this year.
