Introduction: Scabies is a highly contagious zoonotic skin disease caused by the parasitic mite. The disease spreads throughout the world and a is major public health problem in many developing countries and basically associated with poverty and overcrowding population.Therefore, the objective of the current study was to investigate epidemiologically the scabies in the central prison of Hamadan in 2013.

Methods: This is an analytical descriptive-cross sectional study. From 2900 male prisoners, 384 were chosen by using the systematic method after checking and clinical examination then, the data were gathered by the demographic questionnaire and they were analyzed by SPSS version 20 using chi-square test and T-test.

Results: The results showed that 2.6% of the prisoners were diagnosed with scabies. The highest prevalence was in the age group of 30-39 years. Also, the prevalence of scabies was observed more in people, who were in prison for less than 6 months, buying and selling of drug addiction, lack of having a specific bed, common use of blankets, bath once and less per week and lack of using shampoo and soap. Rate of infection on the trunk, arms and legs were 40, 40 and 20 percent, respectively. Mean of age, term of imprisonment and prisoner’s room members did not show a significant difference between healthy and infected individuals (P>0.05).

Conclusion: In this study, high incidence rate of scabies was seen. With education about symptoms and ways of transmission and treatment of infected patients and improve health as well as reduce the number of prisoners living in each room can be an important step in the control of the disease.