Tinder’s plan for criminal record checks raises fears of ‘lifelong punishment’
When Jerrel Gantt was released from prison after three years, he was handed a pamphlet about healthcare and nothing else. He began searching for employment, a deep source of anxiety for him, and secured housing through a ministry in New York City. He later enrolled in school part-time.
As he settled into life outside of prison and developed a support system, Gantt began going on dates with people he met on apps like Tinder.
The process has not been without challenges – revealing that he is formerly incarcerated usually comes up
early in the dating process for Gantt. “It’s something I dread having to do, and I feel like I have to do it because that’s the type of person I am,” Gantt said. Though information about his criminal history is public record, he likes to be in control of that conversation so he can be as upfront and clear about the details as possible.
Now, a new initiative aims to get that information into the hands of dating app users before a date even takes place, partly to address safety issues that arise on dating apps. The company Match Group, which includes a portfolio of apps like Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge, recently announced a partnership with a non-profit background check company called Garbo to integrate background checks into its online properties.
But critics argue the new integration could mimic notoriously faulty background checks and effectively discriminate against the nearly onethird of the adult working population in the US with criminal records, without necessarily making dating apps safer. •••
In September 2020, Match Group hired Tracey Breeden, a former police officer and head of Women’s Safety and Gender-Based Violence Operations at Uber, to develop safety features for its dating apps. Led by Breeden’s team, Match Group invested in Garbo to roll out the product on Tinder later this year.
Garbo’s goal is to develop a twoto three-minute background check that flags information to dating app users without sharing home addresses, email addresses, or phone numbers. If a user chooses to run a background check on a match, the user would pay a yet-to-bedetermined fee.
Founder Kathryn Kosmides and the Garbo team are still working out crucial details of the product itself, including what specific crimes will be flagged for app users. The idea is to focus specifically on protecting users from violent crimes, stalking and harassment. Kosmides said that drug possession and traffic violations will not be included, but DUIs and vehicular manslaughter will be.
The team is still deliberating on including prostitution and solicitation, crimes for which trangender people have a higher risk of being targeted and arrested; though Kosmides said it was very unlikely it would be included because she personally doesn’t view it as a crime and it “has no association with violence”.
Kosmides said she didn’t want Garbo to only focus on what she calls “human-to-human violence”. “Violence against the state and violence against property also have associations with gender-based violence. And so we can’t just eliminate these completely,” she said.
“If you were a violent individual, I do believe people deserve to know that,” Kosmides said. “Do people deserve to know your home address in today’s digital world? No.”
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Match Group has a long history of safety issues on its platforms. A 2019 ProPublica investigation found a muddy internal reporting process at the company, as several women who reported being raped or sexually assaulted on dating apps were given little or no response.
In fact, they saw their abusers on different dating apps years, or sometimes, months later. The investigation cites a 2016 report from the UK National Crime Agency that found an increase in online-dating assault over a five-year period from 33 to 184 cases – still, a relatively small number given the 7.8 million users on Tinder alone.
One in four women in the US have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) which includes stalking, sexual violence and physical violence from an intimate partner. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (Rainn) reports that three out of four sexual assaults go unreported, a widespread problem that makes it more difficult to identify violent users on dating apps.
But after reviewing 150 sexual assault incidents involving dating apps, the same ProPublica investigation found that most of the accused perpetrators weren’t listed as sex offenders at the time that the crime was committed and concluded that even if background checks were conducted, they alone wouldn’t have been effective at preventing violence.
The Garbo team has yet to decide how far back in time background checks will search, a source of concern for advocates that argue that using criminal history against people who have served their time is another form of “lifelong punishment”.
The company is also working on a feature that would allow users to submit their own “evidence” such as police reports, restraining orders and other legal documents that report crimes or harassment. Documents will need a case number to be accepted.
Sarah Lageson, a sociologist and assistant professor at Rutgers University-Newark School of Criminal Justice, said the onus should be on Match Group to vet users and make sure their platforms are safe. But she argued that requiring users to try to understand the ins and outs of the legal system, or decide to run a check themselves, isn’t an effective solution.
“I think shifting the burden on to people that are just looking for their future partner is really a heavy burden. And it’s just going to reinforce stereotypes and racial discrimination and make people really scared when they don’t need to be,” Lageson said.
A spokesperson for Match Group said the company was working with racial justice groups for “more equitable solutions”.
Another core issue with the Match Group’s approach lies in the unreliability of background checks.
In recent years, many employers have moved away from issuing background checks to avoid the stigma already faced by this population since policing, convictions and sentencing disproportionately affect Black people and other minorities. As of 2020, 36 states and 150 cities have instituted a “Ban the Box” policy that prohibits employers from asking about a person’s criminal history during job applications.
Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, a research organization, argued that because the US does not apply laws equally, criminal background checks on dating apps would systematically filter out groups of people that are already marginalized. She added that records use labels such as “sex offender” or “violent” but that often doesn’t explain anything about the person’s history.
Another reason to be wary of background checks: outdated or erroneous information is often included in public records and court documents. A 2005 study by the private screening company Intellisense Corp reported a 41% error rate in national databases.
The National Consumer Law Center found that with the adoption of technology such as algorithms and data scanning in background checks have given rise to a new set of problems including “false positives” and unverified information from third-party vendors.
Another cause for concern is how widely criminal procedures and laws vary by state and in some cases, by city. “I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for misunderstanding the seriousness of these things,” Lageson said.
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Amid this uneven system of safety protocols, research shows that interpersonal relationships are key to successful re-entry for a formerly incarcerated person. Some see this move by Match Group as one more area of life where those who have had involvement with the legal system, like Jerrel Gantt, face barriers to success.
For decriminalization advocates such as Bertram, not further marginalizing people involved with the legal system. Bertram also pointed out that the risk of dating online is also present when meeting people in bars or other social settings.
“I think what we’re finding out here is that if you want to be 100% safe while dating strangers you often get pushed into these kinds of weird, bizarre scenarios where all of a sudden you’re looking at someone’s criminal background check and you’re flipping through the state penal code,” Bertram said.
“That’s just not really a solution that I think either makes sense or most people actually want.”
If you were a violent individual, I do believe people deserve to know that. Do people deserve to know your home address in today’s digital world? No Kathryn Kosmides