KUAR | By Hunter Field / Arkansas Advocate

The Arkansas Board of Corrections voted Wednesday to hire a former Republican state senator as the prison system’s interim head.

The vote — which wasn’t included on the meeting’s agenda and required a suspension of the board’s rules — to make former Sen. Eddie Joe Williams of Cabot the interim secretary of the Department of Corrections came three weeks after the board fired then-Secretary Joe Profiri.

The board also approved additional inmate space at one facility, pending the hiring of more guards. And it ran into a stumbling block regarding payment of an attorney it hired to represent it in a lawsuit against the governor.

Arkansas prison board votes to name former state senator interim corrections secretary