If it could be known that someone was going to commit a crime,
should the agents of the state take control of the person and
prevent him from perpetrating the crime? Should the state have the
power to exercise some kind of preventive detention of the person
who is supposed to commit a crime? Can a person's "mind" be
examined in some way that the examiner can know for sure, or to some
degree of accepted reliability, that a person will commit a crime?
Can experiments be done that will show that such knowledge can be
achieved?

If someone is convicted of a specified number of DWIs, one of the
punishments is that his privilege of driving an automobile is
terminated until certain the person meets certain conditions. Is
this an example of the state predicting that the person is likely
to commit a crime, i.e. driving another time DWI, and taking
preventive action to protect society from the predicted, future
criminal behavior of the offender?

Something to keep in mind is that society agrees that people should
be prosecuted for "attempted" crimes. Law enforcement agents can
arrest someone who "engages in conduct that constitutes a
substantial step in a course of conduct intended to culminate in the
commission of an offense whether or not the attendant circumstances
are as he believes them to be." There has to be conduct
that "constitutes a substantial step in a course of conduct intended
or known to cause such a result." "Conduct is not a substantial
step under this section unless it is strongly corroborative of the
person's criminal purpose."

So currently there must be an act, or step, to cause a result, i.e a
crime. No one can "read" the person's mind. He must do something to
reveal that in his "mind" he is putting into action the commission
of a crime. Thinking about committing a crime is not a crime. But
how are the neuroscientists going to go from knowing that a person
is thinking about committing a crime to predicting he will commit a
crime? How can a person's thoughts be used to predict that he will
actually take a particular action? Anybody know how that is going
to be done? Is there somewhere to know what a person's thoughts are
other than for the person to say what his thoughts are? Eventually
we face the question should a person be punished for saying what are
deemed to be bad thoughts?