UK police to upgrade illicit asset recovery system

UK police are building a new system to help fight economic crime and improve the tracking, management and recovery of criminal assets, the Police Digital Service (PDS) has announced.

Set to replace the legacy Joint Asset Recovery Database (JARD) that has been used since 2003 to locate and seize illicit assets – including cash, property, vehicles and high-value goods – the Asset Recovery IT (ARIT) project aims to streamline the way criminal assets are tracked and shared, help disparate teams work more effectively together, and improve the evidence provided to courts.

It will also aim to prevent criminal money from funding further illegal activity, with PDS committing to working closely with police officers, financial investigators, prosecutors and local authorities to build a cloud-based system that meets their individual needs.

The system is also expected to support international and cryptocurrency recovery capabilities, helping more than 3,500 users to manage the recovery of assets held abroad or in digital currencies. All of this will take place within a single, streamlined system.

The ARIT announcement follows the Home Office’s conclusion that JARD’s technology was outdated, expensive to maintain, and lacked the flexibility needed for more complex investigations. 

The need to replace JARD has been known for some time, with the Home Office initially publishing a contract notice – worth an estimated £25m – for the “Replacement of the Joint Asset Recovery Database (JARD) IT Systems” in August 2020.

“JARD is an aging system that has been modified and updated on a number of occasions over its 15-year plus lifecycle,” reads the notice. “It is now, however, reaching the end of its useful life as it is not conducive to modern expectations of electronic data capture and subsequent analytical filtering and manipulation.”

Now contracted to NEC Software Solutions – the Japanese software supplier behind the facial recognition algorithms used by the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police – for an estimated £14.4m, PDS said it is aiming to have a “minimum viable product” in place by September 2026.

At this point, JARD will be decommissioned, with the more than 180 government and law enforcement agencies using it – including HM Revenue & Customs – being transitioned over to the national ARIT system by the end of that year.

Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about what happened with the earlier contract notice – as PDS was only formally commissioned to work on JARD in April 2024 – and why it has taken five years to find a supplier to develop a replacement for a system that was deemed out of date in August 2020. However, the Home Office had not responded by the time of publication.

“ARIT represents a bold step forward in our mission to equip UK law enforcement with the digital tools needed to tackle the evolving threat of economic crime,” said Tony Estaugh, PDS CEO and the former biometrics commissioner of England and Wales.

“This project is a testament to the impact of collaboration and innovation in public service, and I’m proud of the role PDS is playing in delivering a solution that helps safeguard communities and ensure that crime doesn’t pay.”

Marco Fiorentino, the executive director at NEC, added: “The new system will make it easier to protect the public and stop criminals from profiting from illegal activity. With ARIT, whether it’s a police officer seizing a suspect’s luxury car, a financial investigator tracking laundered cryptocurrency, or a council officer handling illicit cash, they’ll be able to log and track evidence quickly and simply.  

“This will lead to quicker action, clearer evidence, and improved results in court.”

PDS said the project falls under the Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery (AMLAR) Programme, which is led by the Home Office’s Economic Crime Division, and forms a “key” plank of the department’s wider Economic Crime Plan.

According to the plan, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) – one of the law enforcement bodies that will be using ARIT – estimated in 2021 that, while exact amounts are unknown, it is a “realistic possibility” that over £100bn is laundered through the UK or UK corporate structures every year.

In May 2024, the UK’s then-deputy foreign secretary, Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, said that nearly 40% of the entire world’s “dirty money” is going through the City of London and other crown dependencies.

The latest Home Office statistics on illicit asset seizure show that £284.5m worth of assets were recovered from confiscation, forfeiture and civil recovery orders in the financial year ending March 2025. This represents an increase of 15% on the previous financial year.