Cops must do better with their mugshots

POOR quality photographs taken by Police Scotland of suspects they arrest could lead to crimes not being solved, a report has warned.

- By Paul Cargill

The Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Dr Brian Plastow said a “sizeable proportion” of custody images taken between 2019 and 2024 are of such low quality they are unsuitable for facial search purposes.

Police forces across the UK upload images of everyone they arrest to the police national database (PND), which allows officers to detect potential matches with photographs of suspects captured and uploaded from other sources including video doorbells and CCTV. The quality and resolution of any image uploaded can impact the effectiveness of retrospective facial searches.