Inmates on Friday took two correctional officers hostage at the Maximum Security Unit near Tucker, according to a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction.
In a written statement, spokesman Solomon Graves said the correctional officers were taken hostage by two inmates in a housing area at the prison Friday evening. He said emergency response teams from the department were at the scene.
In a later statement, Graves said both officers were released around 7 p.m. He said the officers were freed with minor injuries that included lacerations and bruising. Both inmates were taken into custody after "a use of force," the statement said.
The later statement, sent Friday night, said the inmates and staff members involved were being taken to hospitals for treatment.
It was unclear what time the officers were taken hostage Friday.
In a call to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newsroom, a person who identified himself as an inmate at the prison said inmates had broken out of their cell or cells and taken two officers hostage. The call came in around 6:15 p.m., before prison officials released the statement announcing what had happened.
"They alive for right now," the man on the phone said, referring to the officers. The person said the officers were in handcuffs.
Trooper Liz Chapman, an Arkansas State Police spokesman, said in a written statement that the agency will be handling the investigation.
Violent altercations have been reported at about a half-dozen prisons this year, sending prisoners and guards to the hospital and resulting in the death of one inmate. State prisons Director Wendy Kelley has said the violence appears to be worse than in recent years.
Last month, corrections officials released a three-pronged plan to correct the prisons' problems.
The first part of the plan involved replacing chain-link fencing around solitary recreation pens, through which inmates at the Maximum Security Unit were able to break through twice, and reviewing security at other recreation areas.
Officials also aim to build "controlled access points" at the entrances to barracks at all four maximum-security prisons in Arkansas, and to convert about 400 cells into "restrictive housing" where unruly inmates could be locked down.