Reducing inappropriate restraint is an important mission of services for people with intellectual disabilities (IDs). In this study, 52 clients who had been restrained were compared with 52 other clients, individually matched on age, gender and level of IDs. Participants were mostly adults with severe and profound IDs in an institutional setting. The two groups differed on six Diagnostic Assessment for the Severely Handicapped-II (DASH-II) and three Aberrant Behaviour Checklist (ABC) scales. However, discriminant functional analysis demonstrated that only DASH-II Impulse control disorder and ABC Irritability and Elimination disorder scores predicted group membership but only moderately. Individual differences in maladaptive behaviours were only moderately predictive of restraint use.