Methodology

What a record is

A record describes one police force or public body and one AI or algorithmic system: who is using it, what it is, who supplies it, its status, when use began, the legal basis and oversight arrangements cited for it, and the public source it rests on. Each record has a permanent address and a short code (PAI followed by eight characters) that can be quoted in a footnote.

"Public body" is read broadly enough to include prosecutors, border and immigration agencies, prisons and probation, and ministries that run systems used by police, because these are often where the same technology is used.

One record per body

The tracker never merges bodies into one record. A statement that "all forces" or "hundreds of agencies" use a system is not recorded as it stands, because it cannot be checked, cited or updated force by force. Each body confirmed as using the system gets its own record instead.

Where many bodies use one national system or contract, their records share a programme name, so they can be grouped, counted and downloaded together without losing the detail of each. A small number of older records still name more than one body; they are flagged on their pages and are being split.

Stages and statuses

Every record sits in one of three stages, set by its status.

A status changes only on evidence: a trial becomes operational when a source says it is in routine use, and a record is marked discontinued only when a source says use has ended. A system that has been suspended, by a court, a regulator or the body itself, is paused until a source confirms whether it resumed or ended.

In development covers technology being researched, built, tested or marketed for police use where no police body has confirmed adopting it. It is included because what is being built now is what forces will be asked to buy next.

Evidence and claims

Every record says what kind of source it rests on.

A supplier's own website, press release, case study or social media post is accepted as a source, because much of what is in development is only described there. Such records are labelled as claims wherever they appear, and their pages say so. They are updated when independent evidence confirms or contradicts the claim.

How records are added and checked

New records and changes come from regular research sweeps of official publications, procurement notices, regulators, courts, parliaments, freedom of information disclosures, research and reporting. Each proposed change is reviewed by a person before it is published; nothing is added or changed on the tracker automatically.

Each record shows the date it was last checked against its source. Blank fields are left blank rather than filled with a guess: if no source states a legal basis, the field is empty, and that absence can be a finding in itself.

How coverage is selected

The coverage is collected every 30 minutes from 69 publishers, regulators, campaign groups and channels read directly, and from topic news searches that find reporting elsewhere. A story is kept only if it concerns artificial intelligence or an algorithmic system and policing, law enforcement or criminal justice. General AI news and general crime news are both excluded, as are political live blogs and company earnings reports.

The same article reached by two routes appears once. When several outlets report the same event within a few days, one report is shown and the others are listed beneath it as "also reported by". Stories found through a news search are credited to the publisher that wrote them, never to the search engine.

Countries

A story is placed in the country it is about, not the country its publisher is based in: a British newspaper's report on a Texas police department is placed in the United States. The country is worked out from the headline, the summary and the article's address, weighing named police forces, places and agencies. When a story names two or more countries equally it is marked International, and when nothing in it identifies a country it carries no country label rather than a guess.

Tracker records use two-letter country codes (with uk for the United Kingdom). Records about the European Union or international bodies are labelled as such and are not counted as countries.

Automated summaries

Some story pages carry a short summary written by a language model from the publisher's own description or opening paragraphs, and are labelled as such. A summary is written only where there is enough source text; a headline alone is never summarised. The original article is always the record, and is linked from every story.

What the record cannot tell you

The tracker records what has been made public. Police use of AI that has not been disclosed, reported or found is not in it, so the absence of a record is not evidence that a body does not use a technology. Coverage of English-speaking countries, and especially the United Kingdom and United States, is deeper than elsewhere because more is published there and in English. Counts describe the record, not the world: a country with many records may simply be one that publishes more.

If something is missing or wrong, see corrections and contact.