UK Law Enforcement Agencies Campaign to Employ Discriminatory Facial Recognition Technology

Law enforcement agencies across the UK effectively campaigned to use a facial recognition system acknowledged as discriminatory against females, youths, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a more accurate version produced a reduced number of investigative leads.

The Technology in Practice

UK forces utilize the police national database (PND) to carry out searches using historical face recognition. This process involves matching a reference photograph of a suspect against a repository of over 19 million custody photos to find possible hits.

Admitted Bias

The Home Office admitted last week that the system was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a study by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found it incorrectly matched Black and Asian people and females at much greater frequency than white men. The Home Office stated it “had acted on the findings”.

“This raises the question of whether facial recognition only becomes useful if users tolerate biases in ethnicity and sex. Convenience is a weak argument for overriding fundamental rights.”

Known Issue

Official papers reveal that this bias has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was designed to mitigate the problem.

Police bosses were informed of the system's bias in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review concluded the system was more likely to produce incorrect matches for photos of females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Policy U-Turn

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

However, this directive was overturned the following month following complaints from police that the adjusted system was producing a lower number of “investigative leads”. NPCC documents show the higher threshold cut the number of queries resulting in potential matches from over half to a mere 14%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the Home Office and NPCC declined to specify what setting is currently used, the recent independent review discovered the system could produce false positives for women of Black heritage almost 100 times more frequently than for white women at specific configurations.

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

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Outlining the impact of the brief increase to the system's accuracy setting, the NPCC documents note: “The change greatly lessens the impact of discrimination across protected characteristics of race, age and gender but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The documents add that police units complained that “a once effective tactic returned results of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a ten-week consultation on its proposals to expand the use of facial recognition technology. Policing minister the relevant minister has described the tool as the “most significant advance since genetic fingerprinting”.

Criticism from Advisors and Monitors

The chair of a police oversight board, chair of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, commented: “There was very little discussion through equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout despite obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns.

“This disclosure show once again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has undertaken via the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Our reports have warned that innovative tools are being implemented in a landscape where racial disparities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

“All deployment of this technology must meet rigorous official guidelines, be subject to external review, and demonstrate it reduces rather than compounds racial disparity.”

Home Office Response

A government representative stated: “We takes the findings of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software has been independently tested and procured, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested in the coming months and will be subject to evaluation.

“The foremost aim is protecting the public. This gamechanging technology will assist officers to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is officer review in every step of the process and no arrest or charge would be taken without trained officers carefully reviewing the results.”