Key facts
- Officers scanned 257 adults and 14 children in 2025, including two children under 10, per the figures.
- More than half of those scanned were suspected of a crime, being unlawfully at large or breaching bail conditions.
- Where a scan produced a match, arrests followed in 48% of cases and a third led to no further action.
- South Wales police said each deployment rests on individual circumstances and is subject to supervisory scrutiny.
- Big Brother Watch's Jake Hurfurt said the scans target minority communities disproportionately.
- The Home Office said operational use of facial recognition is a matter for police, within equality and data protection law.
Ethnic minority people were four times more likely than white people to be selected for some police facial scans, according to internal South Wales police figures released under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the Guardian. The data covers a full year of use in 2025.
The figures relate to officer-initiated facial recognition, in which an officer captures a person's face on a smartphone and runs the image through an algorithm called Neoface to match it against custody mugshots and other face databases. South Wales police, which polices Cardiff and Swansea, is one of the first UK forces to use the technique routinely.
Officers scanned 257 adults and 14 children in 2025, including two children under 10. More than half of those scanned were suspected of a crime, being unlawfully at large or breaching bail conditions. The next most common reason was a belief the person posed a risk of harm to themselves or others. About one in 10 scans concerned a suspected missing person, and the technology was used to identify a dead person about once a fortnight.
In many cases the scan produced no match or the subject agreed to give their identity. Where a match was made, arrests followed in 48% of cases and a third resulted in no further action.
Civil liberties campaigners called the ethnicity figures alarming. Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch, which obtained the figures, said the data shows intrusive biometric tools are being used to disproportionately target minority communities. Aliya Mohammed, chief executive of Cardiff-based Race Equality First, said facial recognition is not neutral because it uses AI and can reinforce inequality if existing biases influence who is stopped and scanned.
A South Wales police spokesperson said the force recognises the figures raise concerns about disproportionality, that the number of searches remains relatively small and the technology is in its infancy, and that each deployment is based on the circumstances officers face and is subject to supervisory and force-wide scrutiny. The force said it would continue to review its approach through governance processes that include independent advisory groups and external scrutiny panels.
Alvi Choudhury, 26, said he was arrested in February for a burglary in a city he had never visited after police face-scanning software confused him with another person of South Asian heritage on a custody database. He said police are over-reliant on AI tools and should not arrest people on those tools alone.
A similar system is being trialled by the Metropolitan police in London and has also been tested in Liverpool. Fixed cameras piloted in Croydon between October 2025 and March 2026 led to 173 arrests, including of rape, kidnap and sexual assault suspects. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has backed facial recognition as a breakthrough for catching criminals.
Earlier in November 2026 the Home Office announced a new facial recognition watchdog with power to stop police forces using the technology if they fail to follow rules, alongside new laws in the police reform bill including a duty for face scans to be intelligence-led and proportionate. The Home Office said operational decisions are for police but must comply with equality, human rights and data protection law.