A Retrospective and Comparative Analysis of the Physical Fitness of Custody Assistant Classes Prior to Academy Training.
Custody assistants (CAs) are law enforcement personnel that assist law enforcement officers (LEOs) and deputies with maintaining safety and security in custody detention, station jails, or court lockup facilities. Although CAs tend to support the work of LEOs at the detention facilities, they still may be required to perform extraordinary physical activity during a work shift.1 Some
of the more important tasks for CAs include the searching of cells, responding to alarms to assist colleagues, physical confrontations which could involve control and restraint of an inmate, or
the need to pursue and corral an inmate attempting to evade restraint. Tasks such as emergency response and inmate confrontations could potentially be very physically taxing for a CA, and could
endanger the safety and well-being of the CA, their colleagues, and other inmates.
Despite the importance of physical health and fitness for a CA, depending on the agency, applicants for a CA position may not need to complete any physical fitness testing prior to matriculation. Not incorporating any physical testing prior to matriculation, in addition to the non-discriminatory hiring practices adopted by most LEAs,5 could mean that the pool of potential qualified CA recruits is greater. However, a possible by-product of this approach is that the number of potential qualified individuals, and the resulting accepted recruits, may have very different fitness levels prior to commencing the academy training period.
Sport Exerc Med Open J. 2018; 4(2): 44-51. doi: 10.17140/SEMOJ-4-159
