There are numerous individual and social benefits of increasing prisoners’ educational motivation and their level of education. During incarceration they can be motivated to consider education because of the value of education, their own resettlement, future job prospects, to break free from prison routines, or simply to be around others. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between prisoners’ educational motives and their participation in education or desires to start an education in prison. The participants were 750 prisoners who attended prison education in Norwegian prisons in 2009, plus 898 other prisoners. Three motive categories were identified: “Future planning”, “Social reasons and escapism”, and “Competence building” (learning for the sake of learning). The first factor explained more than twice of the variance of the sum of the two others. Prisoners with high scores in the competence building category were significantly more prone to participate in education in prison, also when other commonly used background variables were controlled for statistically. Among those who did not participate, high scores in competence building also predicted that they desired to start an education while incarcerated. Prisoners with high scores in the future planning category were less likely to participate in prison education. We then discuss why this latter somewhat surprising negative effect occurred.