Optimized vehicle license plate recognition

Techniques for optimizing vehicle license plate recognition in images and their decoding include training a set of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) by using images in which license plates are identified or labeled as a whole, rather than by license plate parts or key points, and rather than by the individual, segmented characters represented thereon. The trained CNNs may operate on target images of environments to localize images of license plates included therein and determine the issuing jurisdiction and/or ordered set of characters represented on detected license plates without utilizing character segmentation and/or per-character recognition techniques. As such, license plates depicted within target images are able to be detected and decoded with greater tolerances for lighting conditions, deformations or damages, occlusions, differing image resolutions, differing angles of capture, variations of other objects depicted within the images (such as dense or changing signage), etc.