Police Facial Recognition Technology
Benefits
RFR helps identify suspects, missing or deceased people, with police conducting over 25,000 facial searches monthly. Notable successes include identifying violent offenders, burglars, and rioters. LFR has led to over 1,300 arrests in London (Jan 2024-Sep 2025) for serious crimes including rape, domestic abuse, and robbery. OIFR has helped identify vulnerable individuals needing assistance, wanted criminals, and those providing false identities.
Details
- Tool name
- Police Facial Recognition Technology
- Organisation
- UK Government
- Status
- live
- AI method (as recorded)
- Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Other
- AI method (normalised tags)
- Computer Vision Machine Learning Other
- Usecase
- Vision AI
- Origin
- gov.uk
- Owning team
- Home Office
- Date added
- 4 December 2025
- Scrape date
- Source note
- This factsheet from the UK Government provides comprehensive information on police use of facial recognition technology, including types, legal framework, safeguards, and case examples. It notes that 13 police forces were using LFR as of November 2025, and that RFR is widely used across forces. The document addresses concerns about bias and accuracy, with independent testing by the National Physical Laboratory showing 89% accuracy and no significant performance differences based on demographics when used at police settings. [Source]