The findings showed that jurisdiction variables including court caseload and degree of urbanism as well as State variables including sentencing practices and degree of prison inmate overcrowding were at least as significant to jail conditions as actual jail variables including type of standards, frequency of inspections, enforcement system for standards, and inmate population composition. Implementing standards of humane treatment and conducting regular inspections of jails could help to reduce inmate crowding. The author suggests that courts should enforce jail standards rather than State departments of corrections or jail administrators. Other recommendations to reduce jail overcrowding include maintaining lower proportions of convicted offenders awaiting prison by finding alternatives to incarceration and speeding up the hearings of probation and parole violators. Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of variations in the scale of imprisonment as well as studies using better specified models of crowding should be the focus of future research. 3 tables and 33 references