Ethnic minorities account for 24% of people facially scanned by South Wales Police

Police data shows that 24% of people selected for facial recognition checks by South Wales Police were from ethnic minorities, a group that makes up 7% of the force area's population. The figures cover a full year of use, 2025, and were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Guardian. Freedom of Information laws allow members of the public to request records held by public bodies.

Facial recognition works by comparing a face against images held in databases. According to the figures, South Wales Police officers capture a person's face with a smartphone and run it through an algorithm called Neoface, which matches it against custody mugshots and other face databases. Most of these scans are made because people are suspected of crimes.

The gap is wide when set against arrests. In the same police area, 11% of people arrested are from ethnic minorities, compared with the 24% seen in facial scans. Ethnic minorities make up 7% of the total population, so the share of scans is more than three times that group's share of residents.

Big Brother Watch obtained the ethnicity figures, and the wider data has been reported by The Guardian. South Wales Police polices Cardiff and Swansea, Wales's two largest cities. South Wales is one of the UK forces that routinely use officer-initiated facial recognition, meaning officers decide when to scan someone rather than the technology being used only at fixed points.

South Wales Police said the ethnicity figures raised concerns about disproportionality, meaning the share of people affected is out of line with the population as a whole. The force said it was reviewing its approach.