Facial recognition and perpetrator focus – a culture shift

By Professor Fraser Sampson, former UK Biometrics & Surveillance Camera Commissioner

Focus on the perpetrator. That was the message from the UK’s new justice minister at the start of freshers’ week for universities. Alex Davies-Jones urged a ‘culture shift’ when tackling drink-spiking in bars and clubs so that the focus is on preventing and deterring the perpetrators’ harmful and unwanted behaviour rather than expecting everyone else to adapt theirs. Intuitively this sounds right. If we’re trying to protect people – whether staff, students or customers – stopping the assault, the abuse or the harassment from happening in the first place is surely the best outcome. If we’re unsure about this, we should ask shopfloor workers about their experiences, about vulnerability and what they would prioritise. Security measures that catch culprits are all well and good but if we want to prevent the crime, we need to clarify which behaviour we are trying to address.

Policy is for others but practically there is good news for ministers here. In the setting of bars and clubs, the UK introduced a voluntary scheme several decades ago where known perpetrators of behaviour such as drink-spiking were identified, banned from local licensed premises and prosecuted. This successful pub watch scheme relied on licensees faxing photographs and sharing identities of perpetrators within their business community to alert each other to the presence of an individual. If appropriate, the licensee could prevent them entering the private licensed premises in a town or neighbourhood for a given period, sparing police resources and avoiding harm. Technology has moved on and security systems are also perpetrator-focused, allowing identification to be carried out with far greater speed, accuracy and scale, no longer relying on word of mouth and swapping photos, but using digital evidence, auditably and accountably, with clear records, policies and data sharing protocols.

Elsewhere on the high street retailers are starting to use the same combination of focus and technology, deterring the would-be offender rather than expecting everyone to accommodate rapidly rising retail crime. Incidents of attacks and abuse on staff in stores with facial recognition technology (FRT) are showing a significant drop (some say up to 70%) and retailers are realising the benefits. In the era of AI-driven security, crimes against staff, customers and stock are being prevented and the offender focused technology is what’s stopping them.

State-of-the-art security measures have come a very long way since the old CCTV days when images – even from police and local authority cameras – were so grey and grainy they could have made equal claim to being sitings of the Loch Ness Monster as a shoplifter or assailant. Technologically, that period is now part of national folklore too. Retail premises like bars and shopping centres that have traditionally attracted certain types of offending and offender can now access high quality surveillance capabilities which literally focus on the perpetrator, clearly and unwaveringly. When an eerily blurred black and white picture was the principal forensic evidence against you, it might have been worth a ‘not guilty’ shot but for anyone serious about tackling offending those days have passed now. Perpetrators know which premises have smart security and their lawyers know they will face an uphill struggle when high quality digital images are disclosed to their clients. But perpetrator focus shouldn’t overlook the impact on victims and society, not just that of the crime itself, but also of the criminal justice process. Many countries give credit for early pleas to avoid the attrition and delay brought by the trial process. Again, if you’re in any doubt about what that feels like to staff and customers, ask those who have given evidence in the presence of the accused, particularly in an adversarial system such as we have in the UK.

Ministers have recognised the power of new surveillance technology for the police, bringing swifter and surer justice to offenders in the aftermath of the recent public disorder in the UK. That same technology enhances policing capability in areas such as retail and licensing against a backdrop of prosecution backlogs and a burgeoning prison population.

Advisors must be careful to balance competing rights, attentive to data protection and privacy requirements, the chilling effect of surveillance and the ever-present risk of function creep. Having clear legal and procedural safeguards will help mitigate the risks and reinforce the need to demonstrate the substantial public interest in both policy and technology.

The next time you’re in a bar or shop look around for notices claiming the organisation does not tolerate behaviour like assaults or abuse. If allowing something unwanted to happen without available interference is used as the definition, some places have been pretty tolerant. Perpetrator-focused technology means organisations can now intervene and really focus on the behaviour they say they’re trying to prevent. That’s a culture shift.

About the author

Fraser Sampson, former UK Biometrics & Surveillance Camera Commissioner, is Professor of Governance and National Security at CENTRIC (Centre for Excellence in Terrorism, Resilience, Intelligence & Organised Crime Research) and a non-executive director at Facewatch.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  Fraser Sampson  |  police  |  UK  |  video surveillance