UK Law Enforcement Agencies Lobbied to Use Discriminatory Face Scanning Technology

Law enforcement agencies across the UK successfully lobbied to deploy a facial recognition system known to be discriminatory against women, young people, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, 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 carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure involves matching a “probe image” of a person of interest against a database of more than 19 million custody photos to identify possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The Home Office conceded last week that the technology was flawed. This admission came after a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory determined it incorrectly matched people of Black and Asian heritage and females at much greater frequency than white men. The ministry said it “took steps on the findings”.

“This raises the question of whether facial recognition only becomes effective if users tolerate biases in race and gender. Convenience is a poor argument for overriding fundamental rights.”

Known Issue

Official papers show that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was designed to address the problem.

Senior officers were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review found the system was more likely to produce false positives for photos of women, Black people, and those aged 40 and under.

A Policy U-Turn

In response, the national police leadership body ordered that the confidence threshold required for potential matches be raised to a point where the bias was significantly reduced.

However, this directive was overturned the following month after forces complained that the modified technology was generating a lower number of “investigative leads”. NPCC documents show the stricter setting cut the number of searches that yielded potential matches from over half to a mere 14%.

Severe Disparities

Although the authorities refused to say what setting is now in operation, the recent NPL study found the system could generate incorrect matches for Black women almost 100 times more frequently than for white women at certain settings.

The Home Office commented on these results: “The testing identified that in a specific scenarios the software is has a greater tendency to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results.”

Balancing Utility and Fairness

Describing the impact of the temporary raise to the system's confidence threshold, the police records note: “The change significantly reduces the impact of discrimination across legally safeguarded attributes of race, age and gender but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The papers add that police units argued that “a previously useful tool returned outcomes of limited benefit”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a two-and-a-half-month public review on its plans to expand the use of facial recognition technology. The minister for police the relevant minister has labeled the technology as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

Abimbola Johnson, chair of the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the police race action plan, commented: “We observed scant discussion through equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout despite obvious cross-over with the strategy's goals.

“These revelations show yet again that the anti-racism commitments policing has undertaken via the race action plan are not being translated into broader operations. Our reports have cautioned that innovative tools are being implemented in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection already persist.

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

Official Statement

A government representative stated: “The Home Office takes the findings of the study seriously and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been independently tested and procured, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be tested in the coming months and will be subject to further assessment.

“Our priority is ensuring public safety. 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 specialist personnel carefully reviewing the output.”