evidence: On 11 November 2015, the Belfast Telegraph published an article claiming that "almost half of criminals released from prison in Northern Ireland went on to re-offend within 12 months of being freed." There has been continued discussion in the media about re-offending rates in Northern Ireland, and NICVA has included this issue in their Policy Manifesto that they released this year. The latest data was released by the Department of Justice in 2015, and it reports on the rates attributed to the 2012/13 cohort. The claim from the Belfast telegraph does not apply to all convicted criminals, but rather to those who actually spent time in prison. Out of 29,324 offenders that completed their sentence during that year, only 1,624 were actually released from custody. The rest served a variety of sentences, ranging from probation to the payment of monetary fines, which exclude them from the data cited by the Belfast Telegraph.