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Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to deploy a facial recognition system known to be biased against women, youths, and individuals from minority ethnic backgrounds, following complaints that a more accurate version generated a reduced number of potential suspects.

How the System Works

UK forces utilize the national police database to carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure involves matching a “probe image” of a suspect against a database of more than 19 million custody photos to find potential matches.

Admitted Bias

The Home Office conceded last week that the technology was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a review by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found it incorrectly matched 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 effective if users accept biases in race and sex. Convenience is a weak argument for disregarding basic freedoms.”

Known Issue

Internal documents show that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, police forces lobbied to reverse an earlier ruling that was designed to mitigate the problem.

Senior officers were informed 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 Policy U-Turn

In reaction, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) ordered that the accuracy setting required for possible hits be raised to a level where the disparity was greatly diminished.

However, this decision was overturned the following month after forces complained that the adjusted system was producing a lower number of “investigative leads”. NPCC documents indicate the stricter setting cut the number of searches resulting in potential matches from over half to a mere 14%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the Home Office and NPCC refused to say what setting is now in operation, the latest independent review found the system could generate incorrect matches for women of Black heritage almost 100 times more often than for Caucasian women at certain settings.

The ministry commented on these findings: “The testing found that in a limited set of circumstances the software is more likely to wrongly flag some demographic groups in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Describing the impact of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the NPCC documents note: “This adjustment significantly reduces the effect of bias across legally safeguarded attributes of ethnicity, generation and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents further note that forces complained that “a previously useful tool now delivered outcomes of questionable value”.

Wider Implementation Proposals

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a ten-week consultation on its plans to expand the use of facial recognition technology. The minister for police Sarah Jones has labeled the tool as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”.

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 discussion through race action plan meetings of the technology deployment despite clear relevance with the plan’s concerns.

“This disclosure demonstrate once again that the pledges to combat discrimination policing has made through the race action plan are not being translated into wider practice. Our reports have cautioned that new technologies are being rolled out in a context where ethnic inequalities, inadequate oversight and poor data collection already persist.

“All deployment of this technology must meet strict national standards, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it diminishes rather than exacerbates racial disparity.”

Official Statement

A government representative stated: “The Home Office treat the findings of the report seriously and we have already taken action. A new algorithm has been externally evaluated and acquired, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be trialled in the coming months and will be subject to evaluation.

“Our priority is protecting the public. This revolutionary tool 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 pursued without specialist personnel carefully reviewing the results.”