A new (8 April 2026) rapid response report from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology examines the issue of facial recognition technology in policing. UK police forces have used facial recognition technology for around a decade now and the report asks the key questions: - How does it work? - How is it used? and - What are the opportunities and concerns? What is facial recognition? While we might all think we know the answer to this question; it is very helpful to be walked through the process with clarity. Facial recognition technology (FRT) is a biometric technology that estimates the degree of similarity between two faces. UK police forces use FRT to help identify people. FRT identifies people by checking an image of a person against a list of known individuals to find matches. FRT uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to train systems to recognise faces. FRT speeds up identification and frees up police time. FRT can be broadly organised into three steps: - Input and facial detection: an image of a face is captured and uploaded. - Features extraction: facial features are extracted and translated into a numerical template. - Classification: the numerical template is used to create a ‘similarity score’ with other numerical templates in a database to verify or identify a person. Similarity scores indicate the similarity between someone’s numerical template and a numerical template in a database. Types of numerical templates in databases include ID records or people wanted by the police. The infographic below shows the process. Three types of facial recognition technology used by the police UK police forces primarily use FRT software from private sector companies including NEC, Cognitec and Idemia. Police use three types of FRT: - Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR): RFR is used across UK police forces