Lifelong education has become an imperative in the modern world and in almost all world societies. For this reason, andragogy has developed as a scientific study and practice of adult education along with its separate disciplines. One of those disciplines is penological andragogy, the subject of which is adult education in penal institutions. Namely, penal education proved to be a key factor in prisoner treatments for several reasons: it has transformative effects and contributes to reduction of recidivism. The subject of this Master’s Thesis is precisely penal education, and its aim is to present the state of penological education programs in Croatia. Penological education programs are presented through a theoretical analysis of its legal structure and through a few researches that have already been carried out. In addition, this paper describes the historical development of penological education, as well as examples of practices in the USA, Norway and Slovenia. The results of research have shown a worrying situation in practice. More precisely, a very small share of the prison population (in 2020, that share was less than 10 %) attend education programs in penal institutions. Also, it seems that prisoners should be motivated to participate in these programs much more often, and that serious work should be done regarding programs on every educational level. Moreover, the paper provides suggestions for practice improvements, as well as guidelines for future research.