British Police Forces Lobbied to Employ Discriminatory Facial Recognition Systems

Police forces across the United Kingdom successfully lobbied to use a face scanning system acknowledged as discriminatory against women, young people, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a less biased version produced a reduced number of potential suspects.

The Technology in Practice

British police utilize the police national database (PND) to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches. This process involves comparing a “probe image” of a suspect against a repository of more than 19 million mugshots to identify possible hits.

Admitted Bias

The UK interior ministry conceded last week that the technology was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory determined it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and women at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The ministry stated it “had acted on the findings”.

“It prompts the issue of whether this technology only becomes effective if users accept biases in race and gender. Convenience is a poor argument for disregarding basic freedoms.”

Known Issue

Official papers show that this bias has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an earlier ruling that was intended to mitigate the problem.

Senior officers were notified of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The government-ordered laboratory study concluded the system was had a higher probability to suggest incorrect matches for images depicting women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Policy U-Turn

In response, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the confidence threshold required for potential matches be increased to a point where the disparity was greatly diminished.

However, this directive was overturned the next month after forces complained that the modified technology was generating fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents show the stricter setting reduced the number of queries that yielded potential matches from 56% to a mere under 15%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the authorities declined to specify what setting is now in operation, the recent NPL study found the system could produce incorrect matches for women of Black heritage nearly a hundred times more often than for Caucasian women at specific configurations.

The ministry stated on these findings: “Our evaluation found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to wrongly flag some population segments in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Describing the effect of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the NPCC documents note: “The change greatly lessens the effect of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of race, age and sex but had a substantially detrimental effect on operational effectiveness”. The documents add that police units argued that “a previously useful tool now delivered results of limited benefit”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a ten-week consultation on its plans to widen the use of biometric scanning systems. Policing minister the relevant minister has labeled the technology 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 police race action plan, said: “There was very little consideration in equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout even with obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns.

“This disclosure demonstrate yet again that the pledges to combat discrimination policing has undertaken through the race action plan are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Our reports have cautioned that innovative tools are being rolled out in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection already persist.

“Any use of this technology must meet rigorous official guidelines, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it reduces rather than exacerbates racial disparity.”

Home Office Response

A government representative said: “The Home Office takes the conclusions of the study seriously and we have implemented changes. A updated software has been externally evaluated and procured, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be trialled early next year and will be subject to evaluation.

“Our priority is protecting the public. This gamechanging technology will support police to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the procedure and no further action would be taken without trained officers meticulously examining the output.”