British Police Forces Lobbied to Employ Biased Facial Recognition Technology

Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to use a facial recognition system acknowledged as discriminatory against women, young people, and individuals from minority ethnic backgrounds, after complaining that a less biased version produced fewer investigative leads.

The Technology in Practice

British police utilize the national police database to conduct retrospective facial recognition searches. This process involves comparing a reference photograph 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 technology was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a study by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it misidentified people of Black and Asian heritage and females at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The Home Office said it “took steps on the findings”.

“It prompts the issue of whether facial recognition only becomes useful if users tolerate discrimination in ethnicity and gender. Convenience is a weak argument for overriding basic freedoms.”

Known Issue

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

Police bosses were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned NPL review concluded the system was had a higher probability to produce false positives for images depicting women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under.

A Reversed Decision

In response, the national police leadership body mandated that the confidence threshold required for potential matches be raised to a point where the bias was greatly diminished.

However, this decision was reversed the next month following complaints from police that the modified technology was producing fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. Internal records indicate the higher threshold reduced the number of queries resulting in potential matches from 56% to a just 14%.

Severe Disparities

Although the Home Office and NPCC declined to specify what setting is now in operation, the latest NPL study discovered the system could generate incorrect matches for women of Black heritage nearly a hundred times more frequently than for Caucasian women at specific configurations.

The ministry commented on these results: “The testing identified that in a limited set of circumstances the software is has a greater tendency to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its match reports.”

Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias

Describing the effect of the temporary raise to the system's accuracy setting, the police records state: “The change greatly lessens the impact of bias across protected characteristics of race, age and gender but had a significant negative impact on operational effectiveness”. The papers add that police units complained that “a previously useful tool returned outcomes of limited benefit”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the government 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 Sarah Jones has labeled the technology as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”.

Criticism from Advisors and Monitors

Abimbola Johnson, chair of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, commented: “There was very little discussion through race action plan meetings of the facial recognition rollout despite clear relevance with the plan’s concerns.

“These revelations demonstrate once again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has undertaken through the equality initiative are not being translated into wider practice. Independent assessments have warned that innovative tools are being implemented in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection already persist.

“All deployment of this technology must adhere to rigorous official guidelines, be independently scrutinised, and demonstrate it reduces rather than exacerbates ethnic bias.”

Home Office Response

A government representative said: “The Home Office treat the findings of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. 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 protecting the public. This gamechanging technology will support officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is officer review in each stage of the process and no further action would be taken without specialist personnel carefully reviewing the results.”