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Law enforcement agencies across the UK effectively campaigned to deploy a facial recognition system known to be discriminatory against females, youths, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a less biased version produced fewer potential suspects.

The Technology in Practice

UK forces utilize the national police database to conduct searches using historical face recognition. This procedure involves matching a reference photograph of a suspect against a repository of more than 19 million mugshots to identify possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The Home Office conceded last week that the system was flawed. This acknowledgment followed a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it incorrectly matched people of Black and Asian heritage and women at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The Home Office said it “had acted on the findings”.

“It prompts the issue of whether facial recognition only becomes useful if users tolerate biases in race and gender. Convenience is a weak argument for overriding fundamental rights.”

Long-Standing Problem

Official papers reveal that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an earlier ruling that was intended to address the problem.

Police bosses were notified of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review concluded the system was more likely to suggest incorrect matches for images depicting women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Reversed Decision

In reaction, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the accuracy setting required for potential matches be increased to a level where the bias was significantly reduced.

However, this directive was overturned the next month after forces complained that the modified technology was producing fewer “investigative leads”. Internal records indicate the stricter setting reduced the number of searches resulting in potential matches from 56% to a just 14%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the Home Office and NPCC refused to say what threshold is now in operation, the latest NPL study found the system could generate incorrect matches for Black women almost 100 times more often than for white women at certain settings.

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

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Outlining the effect of the temporary raise to the system's confidence threshold, the NPCC documents state: “The change significantly reduces the impact of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of race, age and sex but had a significant negative impact on operational effectiveness”. The papers further note that police units complained that “a previously useful tool returned results of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has launched a two-and-a-half-month public review on its proposals to expand the use of facial recognition technology. The minister for police 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 through equality strategy sessions of the technology deployment even with clear relevance with the strategy's goals.

“These revelations demonstrate yet again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has made through the race action plan are not being translated into wider practice. Our reports have warned that innovative tools are being implemented in a context where racial disparities, inadequate oversight and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

“All deployment of facial recognition must meet rigorous official guidelines, be subject to external review, and demonstrate it reduces rather than compounds racial disparity.”

Official Statement

A government representative said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A new algorithm has been externally evaluated and acquired, which has no statistically significant bias. It will be trialled early next year and will be undergo further assessment.

“Our priority is protecting the public. This revolutionary tool 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 results.”