Cite as: 536 U. S. 24 (2002)
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
Abuse Treatment Program (SATP) were so great as to constitute compulsion for the purposes of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. I therefore agree with the plurality that the decision below should be reversed.
The text of the Fifth Amendment does not prohibit all penalties levied in response to a person's refusal to incriminate himself or herself—it prohibits only the compulsion of such testimony. Not all pressure necessarily "compel[s]" incriminating statements.
For instance, in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 455 (1966), we found that an environment of police custodial interrogation was coercive enough to require prophylactic warnings only after observing that such an environment exerts a "heavy toll on individual liberty." But we have not required Miranda warnings during noncustodial police questioning. See, e. g., Beckwith v. United States, 425 U. S. 341 (1976). In restricting Miranda's applicability, we have not denied that noncustodial questioning imposes some sort of pressure on suspects to confess to their crimes. See Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U. S. 492, 495 (1977) (per curiam) ("Any interview of one suspected of a crime by a police officer will have coercive aspects to it . . ."); Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 440 (1984) (describing the "comparatively nonthreatening character of [noncustodial] detentions" (emphasis added)). Rather, as suggested by the text of the Fifth Amendment, we have asked whether the pressure imposed in such situations rises to a level where it is likely to "compe[l]" a person "to be a witness against himself."
The same analysis applies to penalties imposed upon a person as a result of the failure to incriminate himself—some penalties are so great as to "compe[l]" such testimony, while others do not rise to that level. Our precedents establish that certain types of penalties are capable of coercing incriminating testimony: termination of employment, Uniformed Sanitation Men Assn., Inc. v. Commissioner of Sanitation of City of New York, 392 U. S. 280 (1968), the loss of a profes-
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