Which police forces use facial recognition?published at 10:49 British Summer Time

10:49 BST

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

A facial recognition van being used by the Metropolitan Police in south London in 2024. The van has cameras on the roof and a sign on the back saying "Live Facial Recognition in Operation".Image source, PA Media

Ten Live Facial Recognition (LFR) vans will be used by seven police forces in England to help catch serious criminals, the Home Office has announced.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson said the technology would be used to identify offenders wanted for serious crimes such as “rape, GBH, robbery, knife crime and domestic abuse”.

LFR has been used for almost a decade, and we know that at least six forces in England and Wales have deployed the technology:

Metropolitan Police

South Wales Police

Northamptonshire Police

Bedfordshire Police

Hampshire Police

Essex Police

I’ve contacted each force to ask how often and for what reason this technology has been used. I’ve also asked about how often it’s led to an arrest and whether it’s mistakenly identified suspects.

There’s already some publicly available data on its use by certain forces. According to figures compiled by a group of London Assembly , externalm, externalembers, external, for example, the Met used LFR 117 times in an eight-month period between between January and August 2024 – up from 32 times in a four-year period between 2020 and 2023.