Introduction: Prison presents a big change in setting, regime and habits for prisoners. Restricting setting such as prison, has negative effects on people and with prisoners, there is a high chance of occupational deprivation, which then affects their health and wellbeing. Occupational therapy helps prisoners with adjustment to a new setting, combating the loss of occupations, facing their problems with emotion and behaviour regulation and helps with plans about life after release. Purpose: To present occupational therapy with prisoners. Methods: Descriptive method of literature review has been used. Literature has been searched on an internet database Digitalna knjižnica Univerze v Ljubljani, with access to different databases (Sage, Sciencedirect, Cohrane library, Medline – Whiley Online Library itd.). Used keywords were occupational therapy, prisoner and prison in Slovenian and English. In analysis we included articles available in full text, that were published between 2010 and 2021, written in english. Results: In analysis we included 9 articles. Three researches included occupational therapists, two prisoners and one included occupational therapists and prisoners. With synthesis we put articles in five categories: researches about the use of practice models, researches about the use of assessments, researches about occupational therapy’s philosophy, researches about the use of sensory-based approaches and researches about the positive effect of occupational therapy. Discussion: Occupational therapy is manly focused on doing and being. When combating occupational deprivation results are better with the use of occupation-based practice. In forensic psychiatric hospitals, where prisoners with mental health problems are admitted, occupational therapists mainly use sensory approaches. This approaches help reduce acts of violence, they help clients to have better self-control, help them use coping strategies to control their behaviour, help them to better understand and regulate their emotions, and help them calm down and relax when they are agitated. Conclusion: For now it is hard to define the scope of practice in a forensic setting, but with new researches occupational therapy is quickly developing in this field.
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