Bent police tried changing end of confession (12)
I believe the answer is:
predilection
'bent' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'police tried changing end of confession' is the wordplay.
'changing' indicates anagramming the letters.
'end of' indicates one should take the final letters.
The last letter of 'confession' is 'n'.
'police'+'tried'='policetried'
'policetried' is an anagram of 'predilectio'.
'predilectio'+'n'='PREDILECTION'
(Other definitions for predilection that I've seen before include "Preference (for something)" , "Fancy" , "taste" , "Fondness" , "Bias" .)