Retailers have told the House of Lords that live facial recognition (LFR) would be of limited use in tackling shoplifting due to the associated safety and ethical concerns, but that working with police to automatically identify offenders after the fact with retrospective versions of the technology should be standard practice.
In May 2024, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (JHAC) launched an inquiry into combatting shoplifting, which partly focuses on how police and retailers are using both live and retrospective facial recognition (RFR) to deal with retail crime.
Speaking about the Co-op Group’s approach to facial recognition in stores on 3 September, Paul Garrard, the organisation’s public affairs and board secretariat director, told Lords that while Co-op Group itself does not use LFR to detect shoplifting in real-time, it will compile an “evidence pack” for police when reporting a theft, which will include material like CCTV and staff body-worn camera footage to be run through RFR software.
He added that although some police forces will take the compiled footage and compare it to photos contained in the Police National Database (PND) – which holds millions of custody images, many of which are being unlawfully retained by the Home Office – it is not currently common practice for police to automatically check the images provided against the database.
“I think it should be – we’ve seen in South Wales that it really helps,” he said, adding that when police do run the images through the PND, they will often realise that they are also “interested in them for other reasons”.
In October 2023, the UK government launched a business-police partnership called Project Pegasus, part of which revolves around 14 of the UK’s biggest retailers – including M&S, Boots and Co-op – sharing CCTV footage with forces so they can run it through the PND using RFR software.
Speaking during the shoplifting inquiry’s previous session, chief constable Amanda Blakeman told Lords that RFR searches are a major tool in dealing with shoplifting, noting that it is especially helpful in identifying people who are unknown to police but who have still been through the custody process.
“If somebody is known, there is no need to put them through the retrospective facial recognition; we already know who they are,” she said. “From that perspective, we are working hard with forces to make sure that those reasonable lines of inquiry include exploiting opportunities to look at the evidence that we already have retained on police systems.”
She added: “Facial recognition forms an ability to prevent and an ability to gather intelligence. It provides us with an important opportunity to identify some of those prolific offenders. It has certainly been an important part of the work … in relation to those individuals who travel up and down the country and appear at perhaps eight or nine different locations in forces, and of our being able to identify who they are and get some good intelligence around them.”
However, despite highlighting the benefits of RFR to retailers, Gerrard noted during the latest committee session the Co-op group has “no plans” to introduce LFR in stores, as “we can’t really see what intervention it will drive [that would be] helpful”.
This is partly on the basis that it would place the onus on store staff to intervene if a shoplifter was flagged by an LFR system, therefore placing them at greater risk of violence or abuse, but also partly because locally created facial-recognition watchlists would be largely ineffective compared to the PND.
Even with the PND, Gerrard said that there are many reasons people could be included in the database, many of which have nothing to do with shoplifting offences, adding: “There are ethical issues we’d want to think through.”
Nervousness over LFR in retail
Commenting on the legislative framework around facial recognition in the UK, Emmeline Taylor, a professor at City University’s School of Policy and Global Affairs, said that her recommendation would be to create a code of practice for its use in various sectors – although it was unclear if she believed this should have a statutory footing or not.
“There’s no question that AI-driven biometric surveillance can be intrusive to everyday members of the public and to customers,” she said. “Similarly, there’s no question that this could be a very effective tool in identifying prolific, repeat, and organised criminals, but it must be done ethically in a privacy-first way.”
Taylor added that while 440,000 incidents of shop theft were recorded in the past 12 months, the British Retail Consortium estimates there are almost 17 million incidents a year, suggesting that just 3% of cases are being reported.
She further noted, however, that this theft is largely driven by social factors – including poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and mental health issues – as well as a decade of austerity measures that have reduced access to vital public services that help people deal with these issues.
Gerrard added that while he believes the public would want to see action taken against shoplifters, there is still a public debate to be had around how intrusive law enforcement actually needs to be.
“Ultimately, people come into our stores for five minutes, get four or five things, and run out. These have to be places that people feel comfortable coming into, a place that’s easy to come into to shop,” he said. “If we get to the point of having shops that are built like fortresses, then we start to lose the very essence of the high street.”
Taylor said that as police are asked “to do more with less” as a result of government-imposed austerity, technology will be begin to play a greater role; and that alternative approaches like “business crime reduction partnerships” (BCRPs) can fill the void “by being the eyes and ears on the streets in the communities, intelligence gathering and really addressing issues before they blossom”.
According to the National Business Crime Centre, there are currently more than 250 BCRPs in the UK, which are a subscription-based, business-led action groups that work with police and local authorities to tackle and reduce crime affecting businesses.
James Lowson, chief executive at the Association of Convenience Stores, said that less than 10% of the small retailers participating are currently using LFR, but will partner with each other to create local watchlists of known offenders to identify shoplifters as they enter stores.
Adam Ratcliffe, operations director at the Safer Business Network CIC, added that businesses collaborating to create these local watchlists will then be able to work with police afterwards because they are then going after already known offenders, but that LFR adoption is so low across the sector due to ongoing concerns around the legality and accuracy of the technology.
“There’s so much nervousness around the live recognition, a lot of retailers are not willing to even entertain it until a lot further down the line,” he said.