Millions spent by force on facial recognition

USING facial recognition has cost police more than £3.5m and resulted in 93 arrests since its introduction, according to the latest available police data.

- TED PESKETT

Automatic facial recognition (AFR) has been deployed more than 150 times by South Wales Police since 2017 with a gap of inactivity across 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The technology, which compares images of faces against a police database, is most commonly deployed during major events with live recognition generating alerts that can result in an arrest.

South Wales Police data shows there were no alerts resulting in incorrect interventions over the past five years.

However in its first few years of deployment there were hundreds.

An 'intervention' is when a police officer is dispatched after an alert is created. It does not always result in an arrest.

During the first deployment of AFR for the Champions League final in Cardiff from May 31, 2017, to June 3, 2017, 2,632 alerts were made.

Of these 173 were 'positive' alerts and 2,554 were incorrect. Five interventions were made from the negative alerts and 96 were made from the positive ones.

One arrest resulted from the use of AFR during this period.

In 2018 there were 88 incorrect alerts and 21 interventions as a result of these.

In 2019 there were 59 incorrect alerts resulting in 21 interventions.

Data obtained via a freedom of information request made to South Wales Police shows it cost the force £3,521,895 to use facial recognition between 2017 and 2024.

The following amount was spent in each calendar year:

2017- £1,149,323

2018 - £578,805

2019- £190,548

2020 - £342,150

2021 - £239,743

2022- £490,381