European countries are unique in their abolitionist stance and adherence to the international regulations regarding imprisonment and protection of prisoners’ rights that lead to the reconstruction of penal power in the prison environment caused a departure from the traditional forms of power based on coercion and introduced the “soft power” approach in dealing with prisoners, based on “good” prison staff-prisoners relations. The latter presents the basis for achieving internal legitimacy in prisons that is fundamentally dialogical and relational, deriving from interactions between prison actors. The fundamentally dialogical nature of legitimacy makes it inherently unstable and vulnerable to influences from the specific features of the social contexts. Prison workers’ self-legitimacy, as one form of legitimacy, reflects the power holder’s confidence in the rightfulness of authority they hold, reflecting the society’s fairness and shared moral values. In contemporary prisons, the self-legitimacy of prison workers is founded on a belief that their ability to use entrusted power legally complies with the humanistic values of society.