Title: What happens to evidence once a police case is closed? - Quora
Headings: What happens to evidence once a police case is closed?
What happens to evidence once a police case is closed?
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Will the police let me know when an investigation is closed?

Content: If they were convicted or pleaded guilty then the paperwork gets scanned and deep stored electronically, CCTV tends to be discarded unless the sentence is beyond a certain prison sentence (can’t recall exactly, 3 years comes to mind from recent ACPO guidance) - clothing, weapons and the like, if it was never used in the trial will be returned or destroyed, if it was and the sentence is small, probably still returned or destro
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Lower level stuff (assaults, burglaries, public order, thefts etc) then chances are there won’t be there much physical evidence, mostly statements and some CCTV sometimes. If they were convicted or pleaded guilty then the paperwork gets scanned and deep stored electronically, CCTV tends to be discarded unless the sentence is beyond a certain prison sentence (can’t recall exactly, 3 years comes to mind from recent ACPO guidance) - clothing, weapons and the like, if it was never used in the trial will be returned or destroyed, if it was and the sentence is small, probably still returned or destroyed. Cash isn’t really evidence as such, it is more regarded as illegally obtained assets, so it would have been paid into a holding account pending trial ending and if court orders forfeiture it is then transferred into a Constabulary seizure account to be forwarded to the Home Office who do what they see fit with it. For higher end offences, often evidence may go to deep storage, again there are timescales for this, 7 years or more potentially. If the case is closed because there are no leads, it is unsolved, then for low level stuff it becomes something of an investigative decision by the officer in the case (OIC). CCTV is the usual one. Nowadays we are moving to downloading all recorded imagery onto ever-expanding storage so it can be retrieved but we don’t have to maintain a huge warehouse somewhere - VHS tapes were always a huge headache for the property officer. Murders and other similar level matters, the evidence potentially will be retained for 99 years - hence the periodic retesting of exhibits in cold cases using newly developed forensic techniques. Clearing out exhibits isn’t a continuous process, the OIC gets property reminders to do something with the items they have accumulated across all their investigations, past and present, and eventually when the nagging gets too much they will authorise destruction/return etc. But often that exhibit will still physically sit there until the property officer needs some shelf space and checks for things that can be binned off.