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A path model, based on correctional literature and on other disciplines as well, was developed to account for turnover intent and absenteeism among correctional staff. It is postulated that job satisfaction and organizational commitment are important antecedents of both turnover intent and absenteeism, and that job satisfaction has a significant effect on organizational commitment. Additionally, work environment factors are salient antecedents of both job satisfaction and organizational commitment, even after controlling for effects of personal characteristics, and the work environment indirectly impacts turnover intent and absenteeism of correctional staff through job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Using data from a subsample of the 1994 Prison Social Climate Survey from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the proposed path model was tested using Ordinary Least Squares regression. While many of the selected personal characteristics had significant effects, the work environment factors accounted for a far greater proportion of the variance in job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Of the work environment measures, organizational power and promotional opportunity had the largest effects on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Additionally, job stress had a significant negative effect on organizational commitment, while job satisfaction had a significant positive effect on organizational commitment. For turnover intent, job satisfaction and organizational commitment had the largest effects. While job stress had the third largest effect, its effect was far less than that of either job satisfaction or organizational commitment. In addition, the work environment factors had significant total effects on turnover intent, all indirect. Very little variance in absenteeism was explained in this study (R-Squared = 0.075). The poor results for absenteeism were attributed to both model misspecification and the use of a duration rather than a frequency based measure of absenteeism. While job satisfaction and organizational commitment had statistically significant effects on absenteeism, gender (i.e., female) and job stress had the largest effects on absenteeism. The path model was tested among six sub-populations of federal correctional staff-gender, race, educational level, job position, age, and tenure. The findings described above were largely similar across the analyses of the different sub-populations. Finally, recommendations for future research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]