To stay or quit: A review of the literature on correctional staff turnover

Correctional staff are the most important asset for any correctional agency. In fact, they are the heart and soul of any correctional organization. Many staff, however, voluntarily quit. The cost of this turnover is high for correctional organizations. Nonetheless, correctional staff turnover has generated only limited research. Moreover, there has been little direction in the correctional turn-over research. The different forms of turnover are discussed and the correctional staff turnover research is reviewed. A causal model for correctional staff voluntary turnover is developed and presented to guide future research. This article is a revision of a paper presented at the 1998 American Society of Criminology Annual meeting in Washington D. C. and my dissertation. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, as well as Janet Lambert, Ferris State University, for her assistance in editing and proofreading this article.