The Criminals' Henchmen are the Most Wanted criminals' escorts.
These ships look like regular ones, but do half the damage and have much more health. Like their bosses, they may initially appear on your HUD as neutral/friendly (yellow/green), but as soon as you scan their leader and his name shows up, they'll change to enemies (red). Their allegience to their leader overrides their nominal faction identity; they will also attack Station Security forces that belong to that faction, and will shoot at you.
This makes it easier to tell them apart from the other ships and shoot them down without provoking the security forces.