First and foremost, national implementation of electronic monitoring and an evaluation of that two to three years out would be a very worthwhile exercise. It would allow us to widen the selection criteria beyond individuals who may be deemed to be lower risk and therefore you can't demonstrate much impact in terms of outcomes on conditional release because of that.
Recommendations on a nation-wide basis for Canada are an important aspect because of the geographic locations and the distance we have to provide supervision. It makes very, very good sense, from an operational perspective, and also from a methodological perspective.
With respect to timeframes, you're correct in inferring that we need time for the electronic monitoring initiative and implementation to take place. Usually about two to three years is ideal.
Evaluation cycles to look at what happens over time are pretty standard in our operational environment. They usually operate between three to five years for a program, or anything else. It has to be well designed and managed and incorporate various relevant outcomes. Certain outcomes would be very, very important. We would know to look at individuals who may have faced suspensions or revocations and had been put back into an institution; that might be one outcome that would be looked at.
Also, the issue of residency conditions that are imposed on offenders might be another outcome measure. The length of them might be reduced, which means that even out in the community the costs associated with putting somebody in a halfway house or a community correctional centre could be reduced as well.
So, yes, there are some benefits that could be seen from a national implementation.
From a technological perspective, we need to find devices and equipment, and to provide the resources to acquire that. I think the operational readiness, which was the test of the original pilot to say we can do it...but we also need to expand beyond the one area to truly test its impact. Going beyond one area, which was the Ontario region of our organization, would really provide a true test to see what the results would be.