Introduction: Evaluation of the mental condition of prisoners is of paramount importance and monitoring their mental health is vital. The objective of the current study was assessing the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the inmates of the prisons of Kerman City. Method: In this descriptive-analytic-cross-sectional study, the totality of inmates of the prisons of Kerman City, who were sentenced to more than 4 months jail term and have passed at least one month of the term in prison in 2013 were introduced into the research with a sample size of 228 subjects among whom 114 were women and the other 114 were men. The data were analyzed by SPSS and Chi-squared test. All in all, 50 % of subjects were male. The more popular age of prevalence was between 18-28 with 44.7 % for women and 62.3 % for the men. As to the educational status of the subjects the most frequent educational degree was under-diploma with 72.8 %. According to the mental condition and comparison of the acquired statistics of the data in the groups of women and men, there was a crisis as to the mental disorders and 87.3 % of women and 83.3 % of men were mentally ill in the time of committing crime. Conclusion: The most prevalent disorder among the whole prisoners was advanced depression and many of the prisoners suffered from one of the fundamental personality disorders.
