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Police forces across the United Kingdom successfully lobbied to deploy a facial recognition system known to be discriminatory against women, youths, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a less biased version produced a reduced number of potential suspects.

The Technology in Practice

UK forces utilize the national police database to conduct searches using historical face recognition. This process entails comparing a reference photograph of a suspect against a database of over 19 million custody photos to find possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was flawed. This admission came after a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory determined it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and women at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The Home Office said it “had acted on the findings”.

“This raises the issue of whether this technology only becomes useful if users tolerate biases in ethnicity and gender. Convenience is a weak argument for disregarding fundamental rights.”

Long-Standing Problem

Official papers show that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for more than a year. Furthermore, law enforcement lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was intended to mitigate the problem.

Police bosses were informed of the system's bias in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned laboratory study concluded the system was more likely to produce false positives for images depicting women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Policy U-Turn

In reaction, the national police leadership body mandated that the confidence threshold required for possible hits be increased to a level where the disparity was significantly reduced.

However, this directive was reversed the following month following complaints from police that the modified technology was generating a lower number of “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents show the stricter setting cut the number of searches resulting in potential matches from 56% to a mere under 15%.

Severe Disparities

Although the authorities declined to specify what setting is currently used, the latest independent review discovered the system could produce incorrect matches for women of Black heritage nearly a hundred times more frequently than for white women at specific configurations.

The ministry commented on these findings: “Our evaluation found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to wrongly flag some demographic groups in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Outlining the impact of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the police records state: “This adjustment significantly reduces the effect of bias across protected characteristics of race, age and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The papers add that forces complained that “a previously useful tool returned outcomes of limited benefit”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the government has launched a ten-week public review on its proposals to expand the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police Sarah Jones has labeled the tool as the “biggest breakthrough since DNA matching”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

The chair of a police oversight board, head of the advisory panel for the police race action plan, commented: “We observed very little discussion in equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout even with clear relevance with the strategy's goals.

“This disclosure demonstrate once again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has undertaken via the race action plan are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Independent assessments have warned that new technologies are being rolled out in a landscape where racial disparities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering already persist.

“All deployment of facial recognition must meet strict national standards, be independently scrutinised, and prove it diminishes rather than compounds ethnic bias.”

Official Statement

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software has been externally evaluated and procured, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be tested in the coming months and will be subject to evaluation.

“The foremost aim is ensuring public safety. This gamechanging technology will support police to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the process and no further action would be taken without trained officers carefully reviewing the output.”