Whether it's an electronic monitoring program, another kind of sanction program, or drug testing, or whether it is a treatment program or a psychological intervention, they are not effective with low-risk offenders. Why? Because low-risk offenders have, relatively, a very small chance of committing crimes in the future. Say you're trying to demonstrate that a low-risk offender has a 6% chance of reoffending. How are you going to have an effective program that's going to drop that from 6% to 2% or 1%? You have what they call a bottoming effect or, in a way, a ceiling effect.
So when you have low-risk offenders, the best thing to do is to leave them alone. You should be checking up on them occasionally, but your attention should be directed to the high-risk offenders. If you're concentrating on low-risk offenders through electronic monitoring or something else, you're diverting attention away from the individuals who pose the most serious risk to Canadian citizens, those who are a medium to higher risk. There, we have considerable data to show that these programs can reduce recidivism. CSC has also generated some programs indicating that they do a good job in that regard.