British Law Enforcement Agencies Lobbied to Employ Discriminatory Face Scanning Technology

Police forces across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to use a facial recognition system known to be discriminatory against women, young people, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, following complaints that a less biased version generated a reduced number of investigative leads.

How the System Works

UK forces utilize the police national database (PND) to conduct searches using historical face recognition. This process involves comparing a reference photograph of a person of interest against a database of more than 19 million mugshots to find potential matches.

Admitted Bias

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

“It prompts the question of whether facial recognition only becomes useful if users accept discrimination in ethnicity and sex. Convenience is a poor argument for disregarding fundamental rights.”

Known Issue

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

Police bosses were informed of the system's bias in late 2024. The government-ordered laboratory study found the system was had a higher probability to produce incorrect matches for images depicting females, Black people, and those under 40 years old.

A Policy U-Turn

In reaction, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the accuracy setting required for possible hits be raised to a point where the bias was significantly reduced.

However, this decision was overturned the next month after forces complained that the adjusted system was producing fewer “investigative leads”. NPCC documents show the higher threshold reduced the proportion of searches resulting in possible identifications from over half to a just 14%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the authorities declined to specify what threshold is now in operation, the latest NPL study discovered the system could produce false positives for women of Black heritage nearly a hundred times more often than for white women at certain settings.

The ministry stated on these results: “The testing identified that in a specific scenarios the algorithm is more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Outlining the effect of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the police records state: “The change significantly reduces the effect of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of ethnicity, age and sex but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The documents add that police units complained that “a previously useful tool now delivered results of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a two-and-a-half-month consultation on its plans to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police the relevant minister has described the tool as the “most significant advance since genetic fingerprinting”.

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: “We observed very little consideration in equality strategy sessions of the technology deployment despite obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns.

“These revelations demonstrate yet again that the anti-racism commitments the police has undertaken via the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into wider practice. Our reports have cautioned that new technologies are being implemented in a landscape where racial disparities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

“All deployment of this technology must adhere to strict national standards, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than compounds ethnic bias.”

Home Office Response

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the study seriously and we have implemented changes. 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 further assessment.

“Our priority is ensuring public safety. This revolutionary tool will support officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is officer review in every step of the procedure and no further action would be pursued without trained officers carefully reviewing the output.”