The impact of population crowding on an individual's mental well-being has important implications for the goals of institutional corrections, making it worthwhile to understand what influences inmate perceptions of crowding. This study examined possible influences on these perceptions for 581 inmates of 3 Ohio facilities that operated at their design capacities at the time of data collection. Both preinstitutional variables (age, race, and whether an inmate was incarcerated for a sex-related offense) and institutional variables (victimization experience, visitation, and a facility's architectural design) were significant predictors of the perception of crowding. The implications of these results are presented.
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