🔗 Share this article

Law enforcement agencies across the UK effectively campaigned to deploy a face scanning system known to be discriminatory against women, young people, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, following complaints that a less biased version produced fewer investigative leads.

The Technology in Practice

British police utilize the national police database to carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This process involves comparing a reference photograph of a suspect against a repository of more than 19 million custody photos to find potential matches.

Admitted Bias

The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was flawed. This admission came after a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it incorrectly matched 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”.

“It prompts the issue of whether this technology only becomes useful if users accept discrimination in race and gender. Operational ease is a weak argument for disregarding fundamental rights.”

Long-Standing Problem

Official papers show that this discriminatory flaw has been known about for over twelve months. Furthermore, law enforcement lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was designed to mitigate the problem.

Police bosses were informed of the system's bias in September 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review concluded the system was more likely to suggest false positives for photos of females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those under 40 years old.

A Reversed Decision

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

However, this directive was overturned the next month after forces complained that the adjusted system was producing fewer “investigative leads”. Internal records indicate the higher threshold cut the proportion of queries resulting in potential matches from 56% to a just under 15%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the Home Office and NPCC declined to specify what setting is now in operation, the recent independent review discovered the system could produce incorrect matches for women of Black heritage almost 100 times more often than for white women at certain settings.

The ministry commented on these findings: “The testing found that in a specific scenarios the algorithm is has a greater tendency to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Describing the impact of the brief increase to the system's accuracy setting, the NPCC documents state: “The change greatly lessens the effect of discrimination across protected characteristics of ethnicity, generation and sex but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The documents further note that forces argued that “a once effective tactic now delivered outcomes of limited benefit”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a two-and-a-half-month public review on its plans to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. Policing minister the relevant minister has labeled the tool as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

The chair of a police oversight board, chair of the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the national policing equality strategy, said: “There was scant discussion in race action plan meetings of the facial recognition rollout despite clear relevance with the plan’s concerns.

“These revelations show yet again that the anti-racism commitments policing has undertaken through the equality initiative are not being translated into wider practice. Our reports have cautioned that innovative tools are being implemented in a landscape where ethnic inequalities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection continue to exist.

“Any use of this technology must meet strict national standards, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than compounds racial disparity.”

Official Statement

A Home Office spokesperson stated: “The Home Office takes the conclusions of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software has been externally evaluated and procured, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested in the coming months and will be undergo evaluation.

“The foremost aim is ensuring public safety. This gamechanging technology will assist officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the procedure and no arrest or charge would be pursued without specialist personnel meticulously examining the output.”