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Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom successfully lobbied to deploy a face scanning system acknowledged as discriminatory against women, youths, and individuals from ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a less biased version produced fewer potential suspects.

The Technology in Practice

British police utilize the national police database to conduct searches using historical face recognition. This procedure entails comparing a “probe image” of a suspect against a database of over 19 million mugshots to find possible hits.

Admitted Bias

The Home Office admitted last week that the technology was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it misidentified Black and Asian people and females at much greater frequency than white men. The Home Office stated it “took steps on the findings”.

“It prompts the issue of whether this technology only becomes useful if users tolerate discrimination in race and sex. Convenience is a poor argument for disregarding fundamental rights.”

Long-Standing Problem

Internal documents show that this discriminatory flaw has been known about 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 algorithmic discrimination in September 2024. The government-ordered NPL review found the system was more likely to suggest false positives for images depicting females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Policy U-Turn

In response, the national police leadership body mandated that the accuracy setting required for possible hits be increased to a point where the disparity was significantly reduced.

However, this decision was reversed the next month after forces complained that the adjusted system was generating fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents show the stricter setting cut the number of searches resulting in possible identifications from over half to a just under 15%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the authorities refused to say what setting is now in operation, the latest independent review discovered the system could produce incorrect matches for women of Black heritage almost 100 times more frequently than for Caucasian women at certain settings.

The Home Office commented on these results: “The testing identified that in a specific scenarios the algorithm is more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Outlining the impact of the temporary raise to the system's confidence threshold, the NPCC documents state: “This adjustment greatly lessens the impact of discrimination across legally safeguarded attributes of race, age and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents further note that forces complained that “a once effective tactic returned results of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a ten-week consultation on its proposals to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. Policing minister the relevant minister has described the tool as the “biggest breakthrough since genetic fingerprinting”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

Abimbola Johnson, head of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, said: “There was very little discussion in race action plan meetings of the technology deployment despite clear relevance with the strategy's goals.

“These revelations demonstrate yet again that the anti-racism commitments policing has undertaken via the race action plan are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Independent assessments have cautioned that new technologies are being implemented in a landscape where racial disparities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

“Any use of facial recognition must adhere to rigorous official guidelines, be subject to external review, and prove it diminishes rather than compounds ethnic bias.”

Home Office Response

A government representative said: “We treat the findings of the study with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software 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.

“The foremost aim is protecting the public. This revolutionary tool will assist officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the process and no further action would be pursued without trained officers meticulously examining the results.”