UK Law Enforcement Agencies Lobbied to Employ Discriminatory Facial Recognition Systems

Law enforcement agencies across the UK successfully lobbied to deploy a facial recognition system acknowledged as biased against females, young people, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, following complaints that a more accurate version produced fewer investigative leads.

How the System Works

British police utilize the national police database to carry out searches using historical face recognition. This procedure involves comparing a reference photograph of a suspect against a database of more than 19 million mugshots to identify possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The Home Office conceded last week that the system was biased. This admission followed a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory determined it misidentified Black and Asian people and women at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The Home Office stated it “had acted on the findings”.

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

Known Issue

Internal documents show that this discriminatory flaw has been known about for more than a year. Furthermore, police forces argued to overturn an earlier ruling that was designed to address the problem.

Police bosses were notified of the system's bias in late 2024. The government-ordered laboratory study concluded the system was had a higher probability to produce false positives for photos of females, Black people, and those aged 40 and under.

A Reversed Decision

In response, the national police leadership body ordered that the accuracy setting required for possible hits be raised to a point where the disparity was greatly diminished.

However, this decision was overturned the following month after forces complained that the adjusted system was producing a lower number of “useful lines of inquiry”. Internal records indicate the higher threshold reduced the proportion of searches resulting in possible identifications from over half to a just 14%.

Profound Inequalities

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

The ministry stated on these findings: “Our evaluation found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results.”

Balancing Utility and Fairness

Outlining the effect of the temporary raise to the system's confidence threshold, the police records note: “The change greatly lessens the impact of bias across protected characteristics of ethnicity, generation and sex but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The papers further note that police units argued that “a previously useful tool now delivered outcomes of limited benefit”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the government has opened a ten-week consultation on its proposals to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police the relevant minister has described the tool as the “biggest breakthrough since DNA matching”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

Abimbola Johnson, head of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, said: “We observed very little discussion through equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout even with clear relevance with the strategy's goals.

“These revelations show once again that the anti-racism commitments policing has undertaken through the race action plan are not being translated into broader operations. Our reports have cautioned that innovative tools are being rolled out in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and faulty information gathering already persist.

“Any use of facial recognition must meet strict national standards, be subject to external review, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than exacerbates racial disparity.”

Official Statement

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We treat the conclusions of the report seriously and we have implemented changes. 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 undergo evaluation.

“The foremost aim is ensuring public safety. This revolutionary tool will assist officers to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is officer review in every step of the procedure and no arrest or charge would be pursued without trained officers meticulously examining the results.”