In the US, everyone has the right to a trial, in theory. However, if every defendant, or even a significant minority of them demanded their trial, the system would collapse.

To solve this problem. Prosecutors (lawyers working for the government) are given extraordinary power. They use their ability to charge any defendant with inflated charges that carry long jail sentences, then offer to reduce the charges if the defendant gives up their right to fight. Despite being obviously coercive and prone to force innocent people to confess, it’s perfectly normal, legal, and necessary to the US criminal system.

Do you mean pleading guilty?

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is its a way to shortcut the trial, and hopefully get a lenient sentence.

Forced confessions you mean? They want to target individuals but need an excuse to that fits the mold or format of their modus operandi. It used to be, in the very least, that forced confessions from multiple people simultaneously would be triangulated to determine the truth, as forced confessions (if they are to exist) should be, but the memo was not received by modern confession forcers, who use an unlearned public eye as a means to cement the idea that something wrong indeed must’ve occurred, typically with the crime being something that destroys an individual. This is in contrast to regular confessions, which are there to incentivize honesty by assuring it will be honored, but again, the memo has not been received. Not only is honesty often weaponized in dishonest ways by the people running the show, but in nearly every society that deals with these types of things, to be honest about the negative is automatically collected and considered self-evident while to be honest about the positive is put under scrutiny, sufficiently demonstrating how some of the fault of the society is within the people themselves. My whole occupation is to serve as the crutch to this anomaly.

A lot of the time it’s obvious who did it.

The court proceedings is about how harsh they sentence the accused, not finding out if they did it.

If they confess and show regret they may get a less harsh sentence.