The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is trialling a scanning system for criminals on probation, as part of a continued government push for the use of facial recognition in law enforcement.
The £8m pilot programme will see the department deploy remote check-in surveillance via the mobile devices of those being monitored during probation.
The system will include GPS tags and the requirement to record short videos of themselves that will be scanned by an AI system to verify their identity.
“This new pilot keeps the watchful eye of our probation officers on these offenders wherever they are, helping catapult our analogue justice system into a new digital age,” said Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending Lord Timpson.
“It’s bold ideas like this that are helping us tackle the challenges we face. We are protecting the public, supporting our staff, and making our streets safer as part of our Plan for Change.”
The pilot is being trialled in a handful of probation regions in England: the South West, North West, East of England and Kent Surrey and Sussex.
Last month the Home Office rolled out a fleet of live facial recognition vans to track wanted criminals, attracting both praise from proponents of the technology, such as the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and criticism from civil liberties advocates.
