Police have marked more than 100,000 crimes as solved in the past three years – despite only handing them over to be ‘taken into consideration’ by the courts.
The high number of cases marked as ‘solved’ has sparked fears that police could be using the handover tactic as a way of boosting the number of ‘detected’ crimes or crimes cleared up by forces.
Asking the courts for something to be ‘taken into consideration’ means that a person who has been accused or convicted of a crime can admit to other, sometimes non-related offences, in order to wipe their slate clean.