I'll begin.
I can't speak specifically on the civil liberty issue. It's a bit outside of my realm.
I could speak about two things. One is about the challenge of making a prediction as to who is going to reoffend. In the scientific literature we cannot make a perfect prediction, and we're always, even in the research studies, balancing off who we can correctly identify and who we may misidentify. What I'm getting at is, we may be getting better and better each year in identifying the highest-risk offenders, but at the same time we will still identify offenders who we think are dangerous and who end up not being dangerous. We have different interventions to deal with them.
The issue of treatability is a very difficult one, especially among the highest-risk offenders. There is now abundant research literature showing that certain kinds of treatment programs can be very effective in reducing recidivism when it's targeted to the right people in the community. In fact, on average, based on over 200 experimental and quasi-experimental studies, the appropriate treatment can reduce recidivism by about 30%.
I just want to put that into perspective for everybody. Chemotherapy for breast cancer runs success rates of about 12%. Taking aspirin to fend off a heart attack has about a 3% effect. So when we're able to look at treatment that can reduce recidivism, or show success by 30%, that's pretty astounding.
One of the things that has occurred in the research treatment literature is that the number of studies specifically focusing on the highest-risk populations is very, very few. As a researcher, all I can say is I don't know for sure whether the treatments that are being given to medium-risk and a bit higher-risk offenders can apply to this highest group of people whom this committee is examining.