THE weekend violence at Risdon Prison was not a riot but a "wanton, vicious and opportunistic attack" on two officers, according to correctional services director Robert Williams.
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Mr Williams said that police were still investigating the attack that saw two prison officers taken to hospital with serious injuries on Sunday.
The injured officers were released from hospital yesterday, and Risdon's medium security division is still in lockdown.
Mr Williams said that one had suffered lacerations to the back of his head and the other had a fractured eye socket and a broken nose.
"This was not a riot - this was a handful of people who acted like thugs," he said.
Tasmanian Prison Reform spokesman Greg Barns objected to Mr Williams's criticism of the inmates involved.
"The Government should not be making a judgement on what happened and referring to people as thugs," Mr Barns said.
"It is prejudicial to ongoing investigations and people's rights."
The four-hour stand-off ended peacefully about 7.30pm on Sunday when the last of the group involved in the attacks returned to their cells.
There were 190 prisoners in medium security at the time.
"The majority of inmates shouldn't be blamed for this. They weren't involved," Mr Williams said.
"There were no demands made while we were negotiating and there was no indication at the time of a reason for the violence."
Suggestions of more than $100,000 damage to the facility were not accurate, he said.
"Nobody knows yet because the damage to the education facility has still not been assessed," he said.
A Tasmania Police spokesman said that the area around the prison was closed to the public at the time of the incident and people were moved on for operational reasons.
There had been suggestions that the violence was because of inmates' dissatisfaction over early lock-down times and cold food at weekends.
However, Mr Williams said that there had been no recent cutbacks at the prison.
Opposition justice spokeswoman Vanessa Goodwin said that she was concerned about a significant increase in the state's imprisonment rate.
"We don't appear to have the resources in the community so that we can have more offenders serving time on community based orders," she said.
Ms Goodwin said that the male prison population had increased by about 41 per cent in the past 10 years.
