Work opportunities in prison can be valuable for the incarcerated. However, prison labour pre-sents significant challenges because of its location behind prison walls away from the public eye,where prison authorities exercise unprecedented power over individuals. Even though work isnot part of prisoners’ punishment in Europe, it is often compulsory. What is also striking isthat in many legal orders prisoners are excluded from labour rights that other workers have.Unlike work outside prison, the legal regulation of prison work constitutes it as an instrumentof exclusion from life outside prison rather than a path towards reintegration in society, and cre-ates structures of exploitation. In this article I examine the value of work in prison and considerthe exclusion of working prisoners from labour rights that other workers have. I also scrutinisesome typical justifications of these exclusions of working prisoners. I propose that work in prisonshould be regulated in line with the purpose of reintegration in society and according to Europeanand international human rights standards on prisons