Northamptonshire Police considering use of facial recognition software

For the past year, Leicestershire Police has been using the NeoFace system, which compares measurements taken from an image of a face to the 92,000 photographs of people on the force’s database. The force has been pleased with the software, which can radically cut the time it takes to identify suspects caught on CCTV.

In the past few months, Leicesteshire Police has given a presentation of the new software to other forces including Northamptonshire Police.

Following an Freedom of Information request to Northamptonshire Police asking if the force was considering using the same software, a spokesman said there were no imminent plans.

Leicestershire Police said the software had been able to identify suspects in 45 per cent of cases. The force has denied that it was being used to identify people in ‘real time’ on officers bodyworn cameras.

The spokesman said: “We regularly review facial recognition systems but at present there are no organisational projects to pursue one.