Some of Britain’s biggest retailers, including Tesco, John Lewis and Sainsbury’s, have been urged to pull out of a new policing strategy amid warnings it risks wrongly criminalising people of colour, women and LGBTQ+ people.
A coalition of 14 human rights groups has written to the main retailers – also including Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, Next, Boots and Primark – saying that their participation in a new government-backed scheme that relies heavily on facial recognition technology to combat shoplifting will “amplify existing inequalities in the criminal justice system”.
