Cannabis awareness courses

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/009115/N

Version Date: 17/12/2025

The Criminal Justice Department and the Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information:

This request concerns the operation of cannabis awareness courses by your police force.
Please could you provide the following information.
1.         Does your police force offer drug awareness courses for people caught with possession of cannabis?
Yes. The Force’s Out of Court Resolution framework is Community Resolutions, Adult Simple Cautions, Deferred Caution and Deferred Charge (DPS). The later two are offenders that are managed by Keyworkers who can deliver brief interventions through one to one sessions with offenders, including interventions related to drug use and coordinate referrals into the commissioned Drug and Alcohol Services. The team has access to other forms of interventions, including a suite of online interventions, one of which is a cannabis awareness course.

Under DPS, contracts of conditions are bespoke to the meet identified needs of the individual, respond to the type of offence and respond to the victim, if applicable. The Keyworker can refer offenders to complete an online drug awareness course specifically for cannabis. This online provision is also included as an option within the Community Resolution process to ensure that people in receipt of a Community Resolution for cannabis possession are signposted to an intervention that raises awareness around cannabis possession.

If so:
2.         What year did the force commence operating these courses?
In terms of an actual course, the Community Resolution adopted a suite of online interventions in February 2024 for adults only. The same course has been available as one of a number of approaches undertaken by Keyworkers within DPS since September 2020.

3. What was the cost of running this course in the 2025 calendar year to date?
   The course is an offender pay model in DPS. The offender logs directly onto the provider’s portal and pays. However, the Keyworkers also undertake a Statement of Means (the same as that used by His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service - HMCTS) to determine if someone can cover the cost. If they cannot or are on Universal Credit, the provider allows free access.

The nature of a Community Resolution requires a licence arrangement with access without payment as it is a quick disposal. This is paid for by the Force each year.  You cannot separate out the cost of the drugs awareness course from the licence as it covers a suite of online interventions across a range of need areas eg anger management, thinking skills, healthy relationships and so on. Therefore there is no recorded information relating to the cost to the Force.

4. Please state the number of times a person attended these courses in each calendar year from 2015 to 2025 to date.
   Since June 2025 we have been receiving monthly reports from the provider of referrals to attend online cannabis awareness course – Red Snapper. These details have been provided in the table below. Please note this is the number of referrals and not the number of completions.
   
   

Please note that for any information prior to June 2025 we would have to do a manual search of all Community Resolutions (CRs) to determine how many people were recommended to attend this course (not confirmed attendances). A recent request showed that between 1 January 2022 and 24 July 2025 there were 8,530 CRs. Thus even for this shorter timeframe, allowing four minutes per CR, it would take over 568 hours to determine how many offenders have been put forward for this non-enforceable and self financing course.

5. Please state how much money the force received from fees charged for these courses in each of the calendar years from 2015 to 2025 to date.
   No information held, it is an offender pays model to the provider to cover the whole suite of interventions. It is not possible to separate out just cannabis awareness.
6. Please state if the income from the courses is used for any specific purpose or whether it is returned to general funds.
   Police accounting rules mean that income generated must go into general funds..
7. Please state the overall number of people who have received a diversionary, educational or intervention outcome for cannabis possession in each of the calendar years from 2015 to 2025 to date.
   
   

Data Processing:
Filtered on Outcome: 22: Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, has been undertaken and there is no public interest to continue. Filtered on Filtered on Offence Description: Possess a controlled drug of Class B - Cannabis / Cannabis Resin (recordable)

Date Limitations/Caveats:
This is is a count of the overall number of attendances and not the number of individuals. An individual can appear in the data more than once.

8. 
   Of persons who received a diversionary, educational or intervention outcome for cannabis possession in the 2025 calendar year, please state the persons with the five largest number of previous diversionary, educational or intervention outcomes on their police record.

From 1 January to 11 November 2025 there were 10 individuals, each of whom received one diversionary, educational or intervention outcome for cannabis possession.