Repression in residential youth care institutions threatens youth’s positive development. When youth experience arbitrary use of power, structure, or coercion, this may cause demotivation, reactance or aggression, and diminished chances of rehabilitation in youth. Because institutional repression may be hard to recognize, a valid and reliable measurement instrument is necessary to signal repression in residential institutions. This article outlines the conceptualization, development and validation of the Institutional Repression Questionnaire in a sample of 180 youth (aged 12–24, 32% female) staying in open, secure, and forensic residential youth care institutions. The Institutional Repression Questionnaire is a self-report questionnaire, designed to measure five dimensions of repression: abuse of power, injustice, lack of autonomy, lack of meaning, and dehumanization. The multicomponent structure was confirmed in a confirmatory factor analysis, resulting in 24 items in five subscales: Abuse of Power, Justice, Lack of Autonomy, Meaning, and Humanization. One open-ended question is part of the questionnaire to invite youth to disclose more extreme cases of repression. Convergent validity was established via correlations between the Institutional Repression Questionnaire and the Prison Group Climate Inventory—as a measure of living group climate in residential institutions—and the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale-Intellectual Disability—as a measure of self-determination. The five Institutional Repression Questionnaire subscales demonstrated good internal consistency. The study provides preliminary evidence to support validity and reliability of an adolescent self-report questionnaire of perceived institutional repression as a multidimensional construct. Residential youth care institutions can use outcomes of the Institutional Repression Questionnaire to improve their living group climate.