A NEW report by a West Yorkshire-based charity suggests that mobile fingerprinting has been used disproportionately on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people by the police.

The Racial Justice Network (RJN) - which has an office on Bradford's North Parade, and an office in Leeds - obtained the data by submitting a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

It found that BAME people were more than three times more likely to be stopped and have their fingerprints scanned by the police than white British and white Irish people were.

Black people were 'stopped and scanned' at a rate of seven per 10,000 people, in comparison to two uses of the scanners per 10,000 white British and white Irish people.

'Asian Pakistani' people also accounted for 21 per cent of uses of the mobile scanners, at a rate of 7.5 per 10,000 people, while Roma people had one of the highest rates of being scanned - 15.3 per 10,000 people.

The report also discusses an RJN survey - involving 115 participants - on the public’s perception of mobile fingerprinting.

It found that 96 per cent of respondents believed that mobile fingerprinting embeds racial profiling, while 93 per cent did not support the introduction of the Biometric Services Gateway to UK police forces.

88 per cent of migrant respondents added that they would not feel safe to go to the police for help or to report a crime, while this fear also pertained to those who felt they could be treated differently on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

An RJN spokesperson said: "We are not only asking for proper ethical duty and processes to be undertaken, we are asking the police force to listen to these concerns.

"Our survey demonstrates the introduction of the Biometric Services Gateway runs fundamentally against public interest and that police becoming a border force means inflicting further harm on those who are racially minoritised, who they are required to protect under the Equality Act."

Dr Laura Loyola Hernandez, one of the authors of the report, who is also part of the RJN team, added: "The effects of years of hostile environment government policies and institutional racism embedded in police forces have been highlighted by migrant participants in our survey. They feel unsafe going to the police if they have experienced or witnessed a crime. This is particularly true for those who have been victims of hate crimes.

"For non-migrant participants, one of their biggest concerns was the encroachment on their civil liberties. As we have seen over recent weeks with the Home Office deleting thousands of files due to an 'algorithm error', how can we trust them with our biometric data, when they consistently fail the public by misplacing and/or deleting sensitive information, which can ultimately lead to deportation, as we have seen with the Windrush Generation?"

Philippa Metcalfe, another one of the report's authors, said: "We were struck by how little is known by the public about the introduction of these mobile fingerprint scanners, as well as how many people were deeply concerned about the harmful impact of them on black, brown, and migrant communities.

"The track record of the police and the Home Office of incorporating appropriate safeguarding and anti-discrimination mechanisms into new technologies and algorithms is poor to say the least - for example, the ‘racist visa algorithm’ that was eventually scrapped in August 2020.

"These failures are reflected in the themes that emerged in the report. To move forward, affected communities must not only be consulted but properly listened to."