Essex Police says its live facial recognition deployments have led to 200 arrests, including 26 in August, as the force continues using the technology to identify people on police watchlists.
The cumulative figure includes arrests relating to violence and theft. Detective Superintendent Stephen Jennings said the system was helping officers locate people wanted by police and protect the public.
Live facial recognition compares faces captured at a deployment with images on a prepared watchlist. An alert identifies a potential match for officers to assess before deciding whether to intervene. Essex says its watchlists can include wanted people, individuals subject to court orders, people considered a risk to the public, and vulnerable or at-risk individuals.
The force says no arrest has resulted from a false-positive match. It also says images of people who do not match the watchlist are deleted within a fraction of a second.
The total follows a post-evaluation deployment period that produced 57 arrests. In figures released in July, Essex recorded 22 deployments, more than 353,000 faces scanned, 173 alerts and 143 police interventions. Those figures covered the post-evaluation period, while its broader arrest total at that point stood at 170.
Essex had paused deployments while concerns about demographic performance were examined, with evaluation by the National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s national measurement institute, forming part of the process before operational use resumed. The force uses Corsight facial recognition technology.
The deployment also sits within a wider review of how UK police forces govern biometric identification. The Information Commissioner’s Office included Essex among five forces in audits that generated 107 recommendations on facial recognition governance. The audits ran between June 2025 and March 2026 and examined controls including training, retention, accuracy and oversight.
The forces accepted or partially accepted the recommendations. The regulator’s work addressed how facial recognition is managed in practice, alongside the technical performance of the matching systems.
Essex’s latest update extends its running operational total to 200 arrests. Officers continue to use watchlist alerts as the starting point for an encounter, with the decision to approach an individual and take further action remaining with police personnel at the deployment.
Sources: Essex Police
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
