entrapment
n. Deliberately enticing a person into committing a crime in order to secure his conviction, as by offering to buy drugs from him. The English courts do not recognize entrapment as a defence. However, a court may stay proceedings as an abuse of the court’s process or rule that certain evidence is inadmissible on the ground that the admission of the evidence would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that it ought not to be admitted (Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 s 78). Entrapment may also be used as a reason for mitigating a sentence.

The leading case on entrapment by undercover agents of the state is R v Loosely [2001] UKHL 53, in which Lord Nicholls made a distinction between police officers instigating a crime on the one hand and merely presenting the defendant with an “unexceptional opportunity” to commit it on the other. In both this case and Syed (Haroon Ali) [2019] EWCA Crim 2809 the judges held that English law on entrapment was consistent with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to a fair trial) and the body of associated case law at the Court of Human Rights. See also agent provocateur.

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