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Police forces across the United Kingdom successfully lobbied to use a facial recognition system known to be discriminatory against women, youths, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, following complaints that a more accurate version produced fewer investigative leads.

The Technology in Practice

UK forces utilize the national police database to carry out searches using historical face recognition. This process involves comparing a “probe image” of a suspect against a database of over 19 million mugshots to identify potential matches.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The UK interior ministry conceded last week that the system was flawed. This admission came after a study by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) determined it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and women at much greater frequency than Caucasian males. The ministry stated it “had acted on the findings”.

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

Known Issue

Official papers reveal that this bias has been recognized for more than a year. Furthermore, police forces argued to overturn an earlier ruling that was designed to mitigate the problem.

Police bosses were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The government-ordered laboratory study found the system was more likely to produce incorrect matches for images depicting females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Reversed Decision

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

However, this decision was overturned the next month following complaints from police that the adjusted system was generating fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents indicate the stricter setting reduced the proportion of queries that yielded possible identifications from 56% to a just under 15%.

Severe Disparities

Although the authorities declined to specify what setting is currently used, the latest NPL study discovered the system could generate incorrect matches for Black women almost 100 times more often than for Caucasian women at certain settings.

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

Balancing Utility and Fairness

Describing the effect of the brief increase to the system's accuracy setting, the NPCC documents state: “The change greatly lessens the effect of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of race, generation and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on operational effectiveness”. The documents further note that police units argued that “a once effective tactic now delivered outcomes of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a ten-week consultation on its proposals to widen the use of facial recognition technology. Policing minister the relevant minister has labeled the tool as the “most significant advance since genetic fingerprinting”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

The chair of a police oversight board, chair of the advisory panel for the police race action plan, said: “There was scant discussion in equality strategy sessions of the facial recognition rollout even with obvious cross-over with the strategy's goals.

“This disclosure demonstrate yet again that the anti-racism commitments policing has made via the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into wider practice. Independent assessments have warned that new technologies are being implemented in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

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

Official Statement

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We takes the findings of the study seriously and we have implemented changes. A updated software has been externally evaluated and acquired, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested early next year and will be undergo further assessment.

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