According to a Corrections Department pamphlet describing the PAT, applicants are tested on the skills necessary to respond to a hypothetical prison disturbance that has broken out in a building across the prison compound. They have to show they can run the length of the prison campus, climb flights of stairs to the top floor of the prison, remove fallen prison guards or inmates by pulling them to safety and putting them on stretchers, and, finally, restrain violent inmates.
The actual test includes several steps, including removing a "fallen Officer (weight 185 pounds) from the scene," which is demonstrated by dragging "an 85 pound mannequin and 100 pound box, both placed on a sheet, for a distance of 25 feet on a smooth tile or concrete floor." Another part of the test requires that the applicant lift the 85-pound mannequin from the floor and carry it a distance of 100 feet," the equivalent of lifting and carrying, with the assistance of another officer, a 170-pound body.
In 2007 and 2008, according the Justice Department's press release, 96.3 percent of male applicants for correctional jobs passed the PAT, but only 58.8 percent of female applicants did so. But are the lower pass rates for women the result of discrimination? Hardly. They simply reflect that a higher percentage of men than women are capable of, say, lifting and carrying 85 pounds of dead weight or dragging 185 pounds across the floor, especially after having run a half-mile on a treadmill at 5 mph and spending three minutes on a stair-stepper at a pace of 96 steps per minute.
The Justice Department has no business forcing prisons to hire women (or men) who can't help quell a prison disturbance or come to the aid of their fellow officers. Such hiring seems dangerous at best. It puts lives at risk, including the women hired. It's not sex discrimination but common sense for Massachusetts and other jurisdictions to continue to use such tests.