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Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to deploy a face scanning system acknowledged as biased against women, young people, and members of minority ethnic backgrounds, after complaining that a less biased version produced fewer investigative leads.

The Technology in Practice

British police utilize the police national database (PND) to carry out searches using historical face recognition. This process entails comparing a reference photograph of a person of interest against a database of over 19 million mugshots to identify possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The UK interior ministry conceded last week that the technology was biased. This acknowledgment followed a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it incorrectly matched people of Black and Asian heritage and women at significantly higher rates than white men. The ministry stated it “had acted on the findings”.

“This raises the question of whether facial recognition only becomes effective if users tolerate discrimination in race and gender. Operational ease is a poor argument for disregarding basic freedoms.”

Known Issue

Official papers show that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for more than a year. Furthermore, police forces argued to overturn 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 laboratory study concluded the system was more likely to produce incorrect matches for photos of females, individuals of Black ethnicity, and those under 40 years old.

A Policy U-Turn

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

However, this directive was reversed the following month following complaints from police that the adjusted system was producing fewer “useful lines of inquiry”. NPCC documents show the stricter setting reduced the number of queries resulting in potential matches from over half to a just under 15%.

Severe Disparities

Although the authorities declined to specify what threshold is now in operation, the recent independent review discovered the system could generate incorrect matches for women of Black heritage nearly a hundred times more frequently than for white women at certain settings.

The ministry commented on these results: “Our evaluation identified that in a specific scenarios the algorithm 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 NPCC documents state: “The change significantly reduces the effect of discrimination across legally safeguarded attributes of ethnicity, age and gender but had a substantially detrimental effect on police efficiency”. The documents add that police units complained that “a previously useful tool now delivered outcomes of limited benefit”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the government has launched a two-and-a-half-month consultation on its plans to expand the use of facial recognition technology. Policing minister the relevant minister has described the technology as the “most significant advance since genetic fingerprinting”.

Expert and Oversight Concerns

Abimbola Johnson, chair of the advisory panel for the police race action plan, commented: “There was scant discussion in race action plan meetings of the facial recognition rollout despite clear relevance with the plan’s concerns.

“This disclosure show once again that the pledges to combat discrimination policing has made through the equality initiative are failing to be integrated into broader operations. Our reports have warned that innovative tools are being implemented in a landscape where ethnic inequalities, weak scrutiny and faulty information gathering continue to exist.

“Any use of this technology must adhere to strict national standards, be subject to external review, and demonstrate it reduces rather than exacerbates racial disparity.”

Official Statement

A Home Office spokesperson stated: “We takes the conclusions of the study seriously and we have implemented changes. A new algorithm has been independently tested and acquired, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested in the coming months and will be subject to evaluation.

“Our priority is protecting the public. This revolutionary tool will assist officers to put criminals and rapists behind bars. There is officer review in every step of the process and no arrest or charge would be pursued without trained officers carefully reviewing the output.”