Eight inmates and two employees suffered minor injuries in several fights Tuesday at Ohio's Pickaway Correctional Institution, a spokeswoman for the state prisons department said. An officer was treated for injuries but not hospitalized, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The other injured employee was a case worker, she said.

Several fistfights broke out between 9 a.m. and 9:45 a.m., Dean said. No weapons were found and the prison was put into a "modified lockdown," in which officers escort the prisoners wherever they go, she said. Dean did not know the cause of the fights, which were under investigation.

The prison in suburban Orient houses 2,000 minimum- and medium-security inmates. Before Tuesday, Pickaway reported four assaults on officers this year, none of them serious. In each of the previous four years, the prison reported one serious assault on an officer each year and a handful of minor assaults, according to prisons system records.