Pursuant to the Act on the Execution of Prison Sentence, with the aim of executing imprisonment, with human treatment and respect for the dignity of the person in custody, his education for life on liberty in accordance with the law and social rules. Such a definition of the purpose of the prison sentence is based on a rehabilitation concept stand on: 1. the individualization of the execution of imprisonment by the creation of an individual program for each prisoner; 2. general treatment programs for prisoners involving work, vocational education and training and organization of free time; 3. Rehabilitation (special) programs. The aim of this paper is to review domestic and foreign literature to investigate the importance of general prison-based treatment programs for better adaptation to prison terms, as well as rehabilitation and training for life after prison and reduction of recidivism. The paper will present the historical aspects of work and educational training of prisoners, the legal foundation on the international level and the current positive legislation of the Republic of Croatia regulating these areas. Also, it is important to present the findings of domestic and foreign authors on this topic. Questions of work and use of free time during the sentence are extremely important, while looking at education we can predict its impact on life after serving the sentence. Because the issue of general prison treatment programs is relatively rarely represented in domestic literature (compared to special rehabilitation programs) it seems challenging and useful to tackle this issue, since the issue of general treatment programs is extremely important if we focus on the purpose of serving prison sentences.