The NSW Police force has agreed to pay a total of $1.85 million to scores of young people across the state who have been wrongfully arrested, imprisoned and in some cases strip-searched due to errors in the police database.

More than four years after a class action was launched in the NSW Supreme Court on behalf of the youths, lawyers for the police agreed to an in-principle settlement on Friday under which each person receives compensation according to the harm they have suffered.

Arrested and strip-searched: Musa Konneh was wrongfully detained for one night. Credit:Ben Rushton

"It's been absolutely crystal clear that there was a major problem in the COPS database and that young people were being very, very badly affected by it," said Edward Santow, the CEO of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) which helped run the case.

"There was both a moral and a legal obligation to resolve the problem and to assist those young people who were badly affected."