Brit police watchdog says cops' use of facial recog risks wrongful arrests

New report calls for change, highlights hodgepodge governance and misunderstanding about tech’s limitations among officers

UK police forces must do more to prevent the wrongful arrests of people subjected to retrospective facial recognition (RFR) searches, according to a Criminal Justice Inspectorate that holds deep concerns about the way in which the technology is used.

According to a report from His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), there is a large gap in understanding among police forces and the National Crime Agency about how RFR should be used in responsible policing.

The inspectorate blamed "fragmented and underdeveloped" frameworks for governance and legislation. 

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It pointed to a lack of bespoke legislation to provide a uniform approach to police facial recognition use - and said existing laws have not kept pace with the technology. HMICFRS also said the rules governing each force's use of RFR are mismatched, and called for a statutory code to be included in the forthcoming Police Reform Bill to set nationwide standards.

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Illustrating the breadth of misunderstanding across forces, the report noted that despite the message being routinely communicated by National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) reps, individual investigators "often" thought RFR results constituted evidence rather than intelligence. 

In many cases, they are unaware that RFR results require further enquiries before enforcement action can be taken.

"We found that some investigators didn't always carry out enough corroborative enquiries before acting on potential matches," the report stated. "In a small number of cases, officers relied too heavily on RFR results, which led to inappropriate investigative action. 

"Although some forces had strengthened their processes after such incidents, practice remained inconsistent."

Later in the report, the inspectorate described the findings as "deeply concerning."

Some of the excuses police staff offered included acute demands on response teams leading to reduced opportunities to carry out further enquiries before acting on RFR matches. In one force, managers were known to encourage officers to "progress investigations quickly" after getting a match on the RFR system.

However, the inspectorate clarified that just because an arrest is made, it does not necessarily mean it is wrongful, as investigators may need to rule out subjects from their inquiries.

The onus for taking action should also be placed on the police forces themselves, given that some lack formal procedures regarding how RFR enquiries should be carried out, the report noted.

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The best forces had centralized facial recognition teams, which generally provided better governance and consistent processes.

Officials fear long-term misuse of RFR, and other forms of facial recognition, will erode public trust in the technology, which it insists remains generally high.

Surveys carried out in 2025 by the likes of the Ada Lovelace Institute and Alan Turing Institute, as well as the King’s College London Policy Institute, showed a generally favorable view of facial recognition use in UK policing, with support ranging from 91 percent and 53 percent respectively.

Home Office figures released on Thursday to complement the report show similar positivity toward the technology among police officers, with only 4 percent reporting a negative experience.

The Register’s comments section often paints a vastly different picture of public perception of facial recognition.

Kathryn Stone, his majesty's inspector at HMICFRS, said facial recognition has transformed policing, allowing officers to compare images in seconds, allowing them to solve crimes more quickly, but echoed the report's main concerns.

"Police forces must be able to show that appropriate safeguards are in place, risks relating to bias and data retention are effectively managed, and decisions are still subject to human judgment," she said. 

"A clearer statutory framework, stronger national standards and improved governance and oversight arrangements are essential to maintaining public confidence."

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As well as legislative and governance-related concerns, HMICFRS also noted in its report that officers' training around the use of RFR remains inconsistent, and if improvements were made, this would lead to more effective and lawful use of RFR across the UK.

Another major issue was police forces' failure to meet their image retention obligations. Forces were found too often to retain custody images taken of suspects on the Police National Database, against which many RFR queries are made.

Police guidance sets out the scenarios in which custody images can and cannot be retained, and the inspectorate found that forces have failed to delete images that should have been wiped.

The Police Reform Bill includes a provision to group custody images with the likes of DNA and fingerprints, bringing about more robust measures to ensure they are retained or deleted in line with legal requirements.

A Home Office review previously found in 2017 that introducing such a statutory framework was untenable. It concluded that police could not automate the deletion of these images, and doing so manually would be too time-consuming.

Jasleen Chaggar, senior legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch, said UK police cannot be allowed to continue to use RFR when it risks wrongfully arresting individuals.

"The revelations that officers are treating facial recognition as bona fide evidence rather than a probability score is alarming," she said. 

"This approach significantly increases the risk that more innocent people will have officers knock on their door to arrest them for crimes committed in towns they've never visited, as we've seen before.

"Worse still, police aren’t even logging their use of retrospective facial recognition, meaning people could wrongfully become suspects in criminal investigations without any record of why they’ve been accused."

Chaggar called on the government to "urgently step in" and help the UK's police forces to sort out the new frameworks needed for effective RFR use. ®