This paper deals with the analysis of modern prison systems. Throughout history, prisons have largely served as a means of coercing current forms of government in order to neutralize undesirable religious, political and social groups, and as such, prisons have testified the worst violations of human rights and institutional dehumanization of prisoners. The French Revolution and the period after World War II represent crucial moments of redefining the perception of human rights, and therefore the position of the prisoners. The standards and principles on which modern prison systems are based, defined by the United Nations, Council of Europe and European Union documents and national legislation, are thoroughly addressed in the work. The European Court of Human Rights, in addition to the role of the supranational mechanism for the protection of fundamental rights, its practice and decisions has a major role in humanizing the conditions in which the prisoner serves a prison sentence. Apart from the basic categorization of prisons and prison architecture, the prison system in the Republic of Croatia is also analyzed. The alst part deals with the historical aspects of the prison system in the Netherlands, the current situation and perspectives. The Netherlands, although it has developed a modern concept of rehabilitation for almost half a century, is definitely distancing itself from that concept, with an emphasis on the security of society and the profitability of the system. Besides questions of how the Netherlands solved the problem of overcrowding in the penitentiary institutions and why are they closing prisons, the specificity of the execution of imprisonment, conditional release and probation was also analyzed. In addition to the fact that the prison system is extremely well-organized, the analyzed trends provide a realistic picture of the direction in which prison systems will be developed, both in Europe and in the world.