AI to free 6 million UK police hours yearly by 2028

Police officers across the UK will use AI to review and summarise criminal evidence under Home Office reforms expected to free up six million hours of police time per year by 2028.

The government has accepted key recommendations from Jonathan Fisher KC’s Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences, including new legislation that will allow officers to use AI when reviewing evidence during criminal investigations.

The six million hours the government expects to recover annually is equivalent to putting 3,000 extra officers on the streets.

The current guidance for managing evidence dates back to 1996, before iPhones, Google, Facebook or WhatsApp existed, when a full case file often fit inside a single box.

Modern investigations look radically different. Some now contain the equivalent of over 500,000 e-books of digital data, while an average fraud case involves more than four million documents.

Under the existing rules, officers must manually process and write a summary for every file that could prove relevant to an investigation.

The Policing Productivity Review estimated that officers spent roughly 532,000 hours in 2022/23 on disclosure work and case files that the Crown Prosecution Service later assessed as requiring no further action.

The reforms will let officers use technology to identify, sort and compile the millions of files they currently review by hand.

Sarah Jones, Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention, said officers waste thousands of hours “trawling through phones, emails, messages, videos and cloud storage because of outdated regulations”, adding that embracing AI responsibly will “free officers to focus on the frontline”.

National AI pilots to scale across all forces in 2027

PoliceAI, the recently launched National Centre for Police AI backed by £75 million of government funding, will use Home Office money to pilot tools that automatically generate summaries of digital material. The government intends to scale the tools across all police forces in 2027.

Al Murray, Interim Director of PoliceAI, said the scale of digital evidence in modern investigations demands modern solutions, but stressed the technology will support rather than replace officers.

He said AI will let investigators spend more time “exercising the professional judgement that technology can never replace”.

Graham McNulty QPM, Director of the Serious Fraud Office, welcomed the response and highlighted plans to explore a new Intensive Disclosure Regime for complex fraud, bribery and corruption cases.

The Home Office has also accepted recommendations to centralise procurement of police technology through the creation of a National Police Service, and to establish a national governance forum for disclosure technology.

The forum will bring together policing, judiciary, prosecution and government experts to oversee emerging tools and ensure safeguards remain in place, a point Chief Constable Tim De Meyer, disclosure lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said is essential to guaranteeing fair trials.

Now read: How the UK’s new social media curfew will work