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Law enforcement agencies across the United Kingdom effectively campaigned to use a face scanning system acknowledged as discriminatory against females, youths, and members of ethnic minority groups, following complaints that a more accurate version produced fewer potential suspects.

The Technology in Practice

British police use the national police database to carry out retrospective facial recognition searches. This procedure entails comparing a reference photograph of a suspect against a database of over 19 million custody photos to find possible hits.

Acknowledged Discrimination

The UK interior ministry admitted last week that the technology was flawed. This acknowledgment came after a review by the government's National Physical Laboratory found it incorrectly matched Black and Asian people and women at significantly higher rates than Caucasian males. The ministry said it “had acted on the findings”.

“This raises the issue of whether this technology only becomes effective if users tolerate discrimination in ethnicity and gender. Operational ease is a weak argument for overriding fundamental rights.”

Known Issue

Official papers reveal that this discriminatory flaw has been recognized for over twelve months. Furthermore, law enforcement lobbied to reverse an initial decision that was intended to address the problem.

Police bosses were informed of the algorithmic discrimination in late 2024. The government-ordered NPL review concluded the system was had a higher probability to produce false positives for photos of 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 potential matches be raised to a level where the disparity was greatly diminished.

However, this directive was overturned the following month after forces complained that the modified technology was producing a lower number of “investigative leads”. NPCC documents indicate the stricter setting cut the proportion of searches that yielded possible identifications from 56% to a just 14%.

Profound Inequalities

Although the authorities declined to specify what threshold is currently used, the recent NPL study discovered the system could produce incorrect matches for Black women almost 100 times more often than for white women at certain settings.

The ministry commented on these findings: “The testing identified that in a specific scenarios the algorithm is has a greater tendency to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results.”

Balancing Utility and Fairness

Describing the effect of the brief increase to the system's confidence threshold, the police records note: “The change greatly lessens the impact of discrimination across protected characteristics of ethnicity, age and gender but had a significant negative impact on police efficiency”. The documents further note that police units argued that “a once effective tactic now delivered outcomes of questionable value”.

Broader Rollout Plans

Meanwhile, the UK administration has opened a two-and-a-half-month consultation on its plans to expand the use of biometric scanning systems. The minister for police Sarah Jones has described the tool as the “biggest breakthrough since DNA matching”.

Criticism from Advisors and Monitors

Abimbola Johnson, chair of the advisory panel for the national policing equality strategy, commented: “There was scant consideration through equality strategy sessions of the technology deployment even with obvious cross-over with the plan’s concerns.

“These revelations demonstrate yet again that the pledges to combat discrimination the police has undertaken through the race action plan are failing to be integrated into wider practice. Our reports have warned that new technologies are being implemented in a context where racial disparities, weak scrutiny and poor data collection continue to exist.

“All deployment of this technology must adhere to strict national standards, be subject to external review, and prove it diminishes rather than exacerbates ethnic bias.”

Official Statement

A government representative stated: “We takes the conclusions of the report with utmost gravity and we have already taken action. A updated software has been externally evaluated and procured, which has demonstrated no measurable discrimination. It will be tested in the coming months and will be undergo evaluation.

“The foremost aim is protecting the public. This revolutionary tool will support police to apprehend and prosecute offenders. There is human involvement in every step of the process and no arrest or charge would be pursued without specialist personnel carefully reviewing the results.”