🔗 Share this article British Police Forces Campaign to Use Discriminatory Facial Recognition Technology Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom successfully lobbied to deploy a facial recognition system acknowledged as biased against women, youths, and members of ethnic minority groups, after complaining that a less biased version generated a reduced number of potential suspects. The Technology in Practice British police use the national police database to carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This process entails comparing a “probe image” of a suspect against a database of more than 19 million mugshots to find potential matches. Acknowledged Discrimination The Home Office admitted last week that the system was biased. This admission came after a study by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found it misidentified Black and Asian people and women at much greater frequency than Caucasian males. The ministry stated it “took steps on the findings”. “It prompts the question of whether this technology only becomes useful if users tolerate discrimination in race and sex. Operational ease is a poor argument for overriding fundamental rights.” Long-Standing Problem Internal documents reveal that this bias has been recognized for more than a year. Furthermore, law enforcement argued to overturn an earlier ruling that was intended to address the problem. Police bosses were notified of the system's bias in late 2024. The Home Office-commissioned laboratory study concluded the system was more likely to suggest incorrect matches for photos of women, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those aged 40 and under. A Reversed Decision In response, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) mandated that the confidence threshold required for potential matches be raised to a point where the disparity was greatly diminished. However, this decision was reversed the next month after forces complained that the modified technology was generating fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. Internal records indicate the stricter setting reduced the number of searches resulting in potential matches from over half to a just under 15%. Severe Disparities Although the Home Office and NPCC declined to specify what threshold is now in operation, the recent NPL study discovered the system could generate false positives for Black women nearly a hundred times more frequently than for white women at specific configurations. The ministry commented on these findings: “Our evaluation identified that in a specific scenarios the software is more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its match reports.” Operational Effectiveness vs. Bias Describing the effect of the brief increase to the system's accuracy setting, the police records note: “This adjustment greatly lessens the impact of bias across protected characteristics of race, generation and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents further note that police units argued that “a once effective tactic returned outcomes of questionable value”. Broader Rollout Plans Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a ten-week public review on its proposals to expand the use of biometric scanning systems. Policing minister Sarah Jones has described the technology as the “most significant advance since DNA matching”. Criticism from Advisors and Monitors Abimbola Johnson, head of the independent scrutiny and oversight board for the police race action plan, said: “We observed scant consideration in race action plan meetings of the technology deployment despite clear relevance with the strategy's goals. “These revelations show yet again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has undertaken via the equality initiative are not being translated into broader operations. Our reports have warned that new technologies are being implemented in a landscape where ethnic inequalities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection already persist. “Any use of this technology must meet rigorous official guidelines, be subject to external review, and demonstrate it reduces rather than compounds ethnic bias.” Official Statement A government representative stated: “The Home Office treat the conclusions of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software has been independently tested and acquired, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested early next year and will be undergo evaluation. “Our priority is ensuring public safety. This revolutionary tool will support officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is human involvement in every step of the process and no further action would be pursued without specialist personnel meticulously examining the output.”