Mr. Séamus Boland:

When I looked at the data, the reality is that 67% of that figure did not fit the criteria to allow them to be accepted into the adult caution scheme. That may be because, as the Deputy said, they did not wish to be accepted or they may have previously received an adult caution - some of them may also be counted in the 5,000 figure - and there may be people who had multiple other criminal offences which are not included in the adult caution scheme. It was considered, however, and they did not fit the criteria. We can see immediately from the data that 67% of the figure did not fit the criteria, which leaves us with 8%, which is a small figure. It is approximately 1,500. To analyse why the 1,500 people did not benefit is quite a large project because I would need to extract the exact details of the cases. They are people who do not seem to have had any previous footprint. We can say they did not benefit from the adult caution in the past, but they may not have wished to accept the adult caution. It is possible the offence was part of numerous other offences that took place at the same time. They may have been found in possession of multiple different types of drugs from polydrug use, which we all know is a problem. They may have been arrested for domestic violence or other violent crimes where drugs are involved. It is to identify the exact reason for that, but it is about the original interpretation of the data, and 67% of those people were never going to benefit from the adult caution scheme because they did not fit the criteria.