UK Police Forces Lobbied to Use Discriminatory Facial Recognition Systems

Police forces across the UK successfully lobbied to deploy a face scanning system known to be biased against females, youths, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, after complaining that a more accurate version generated a reduced number of potential suspects.

How the System Works

British police utilize the national police database to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure involves matching a reference photograph of a person of interest against a repository of over 19 million mugshots to find possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The UK interior ministry admitted last week that the system was flawed. This admission followed a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory determined it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and females at significantly higher rates than white men. The Home Office said it “had acted on the findings”.

“This raises the question of whether this technology only becomes useful if users tolerate biases in ethnicity and gender. Convenience is a poor argument for disregarding basic freedoms.”

Known Issue

Internal documents show that this discriminatory flaw has been known about for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces argued to overturn an initial decision that was intended to address the problem.

Senior officers were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned laboratory study found the system was had a higher probability to suggest incorrect matches for images depicting women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Reversed Decision

In reaction, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the accuracy setting required for potential matches be raised to a point where the disparity was greatly diminished.

However, this directive was reversed the next month following complaints from police that the modified technology was producing a lower number of “investigative leads”. Internal records show the stricter setting reduced the number of queries resulting in possible identifications from 56% to a just under 15%.

Severe Disparities

Although the Home Office and NPCC refused to say what setting is currently used, the recent NPL study discovered the system could produce false positives for women of Black heritage almost 100 times more often than for white women at certain settings.

The ministry commented on these results: “The testing identified that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to incorrectly include some population segments in its match reports.”

Balancing Utility and Fairness

Describing the effect of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the police records state: “This adjustment significantly reduces the impact of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of race, generation and sex but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents further note that police units argued that “a previously useful tool returned results of questionable value”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a ten-week consultation on its proposals to expand the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police Sarah Jones has labeled the technology as the “biggest breakthrough since genetic fingerprinting”.

Criticism from Advisors and Monitors

The chair of a police oversight board, chair of the advisory panel for the police race action plan, said: “We observed scant consideration through equality strategy sessions of the technology deployment despite obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns.

“This disclosure show yet again that the anti-racism commitments the police has made via the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Our reports have cautioned that new technologies are being implemented in a landscape where ethnic inequalities, inadequate oversight and poor data collection already persist.

“All deployment of this technology must meet rigorous official guidelines, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than exacerbates racial disparity.”

Home Office Response

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the study with utmost gravity and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been independently tested and procured, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be tested early next year and will be undergo further assessment.

“The foremost aim is ensuring public safety. This gamechanging technology will support officers to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is human involvement in each stage of the process and no arrest or charge would be pursued without specialist personnel meticulously examining the output.”