Does Eharmony Do Background Checks

"Within Out" by Keri Blakinger is a partnership between NBC News and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the U.S. criminal justice system. The cavalcade draws on Blakinger'south unique perspective as an investigative journalist and formerly incarcerated person.

Jason Hernandez got out of prison in 2015 and started making upwardly for lost time. He'd done nearly eighteen years on federal drug conspiracy charges, and but escaped life behind bars because then-President Barack Obama granted him clemency. He settled downwards most Dallas, began volunteering in schools, visited the White Firm and wrote a volume.

Then he decided to kickoff dating, so he downloaded Tinder. He was open about his past, and at first, it was fine. Simply a couple months ago, he got a notification: "Your account has been banned."

Image: Portrait of Jason Hernandez — Jason Hernandez, shown at a park near his home, has been banned from multiple dating apps. Zerb Mellish / for The Marshall Projection

Although he can't evidence the reason why, he's been booted from half a dozen other apps with similar prohibitions tucked into their terms of service: People with felonies — anything from a $10 drug conviction to majuscule murder — are banned for life. These policies aren't new, but their enforcement has been haphazard.

That could change. Match Group, which owns Tinder and a host of other dating sites, plans to launch a feature allowing daters to run background checks on potential matches. The company says its efforts are aimed at keeping users rubber. But civil rights advocates say the record checks extend an unfair exercise of imposing "collateral consequences" long after people have finished their sentences, and will unduly bear on people of color without actually improving safety.

"Meeting strangers can exist risky, and I worry that this approach will mislead people into thinking they're safety," said Sarah Lageson, a Rutgers University sociologist who studies the growing use of online criminal records. "Information technology's using the justice organization every bit a barometer of someone'due south worth."

Jason Hernandez didn't make a secret of his past in his online dating profile, shown here on Hinge. Courtesy of Jason Hernandez

Match Group wouldn't say when or why the company created its ban, but a spokeswoman said Match would "continue to develop and evolve" its policies. "Nosotros understand and share the concerns raised virtually the impact our policies accept on people who have been incarcerated, many of whom are victims of the inequities of the criminal justice system," she said.

The practice of banning people from sure rights or activities because of a criminal conviction was one time known as civil decease. People who were convicted of felonies lost all property and rights before the usual penalty: execution. Now, the collateral consequences of a confidence typically last far longer than whatsoever courtroom's sentence.

In some states, people with felonies cannot serve on juries or purchase pepper spray, and tin can be disqualified from getting an electrician license or fostering kids. Employers often exclude applicants with criminal backgrounds, some schools won't admit students with felonies, and many apartments ban people with misdemeanors.

Equally someone with a criminal history, these are problems I sympathise. More than than a decade ago, I was arrested in upstate New York with vi ounces of heroin and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Afterwards, I stopped doing drugs, finished college and became a journalist.

I am white and grew upwards in the suburbs, but even for someone with such privilege, collateral consequences are everywhere — and they go far harder to reintegrate into the customs. In the past decade, I've been turned down for jobs, rejected from volunteering at an animal shelter and told I don't authorize for more than apartments than I can count. When I was looking for a new identify during the pandemic, I institute that people cared far more about my decade-old drug confidence than well-nigh whether I took Covid-19 seriously. Hundreds of apartment listings barred people bedevilled of felonies, only I just saw i that mentioned pandemic safety.

Whether they're tucked into terms of service or hidden in unspoken biases, collateral consequences have an outsize impact on communities of color.

"Fifty-fifty though only eight percent of the population has a felony record, 33 percent of Black men have felony records, then whatever ban on people with felony records disproportionately affects Black communities," said Amreeta Mathai, an American Ceremonious Liberties Union lawyer who's pushing the rental app Airbnb to stop banning people with "serious" felonies from using the service. (Airbnb did non offer a comment, but referred me to the company's online policy.)

Most major dating apps enquire users to verify that they oasis't been convicted of felonies when they sign up — but that language is easy to miss in the terms of service, and it'southward on an honor system. Generally, it only comes upward if another user makes a report. The policies don't provide exceptions for nonviolent crimes, and the ban never expires.

When I started contacting the companies to enquire about their policies, eHarmony said no one had time to comment, while Coffee Meets Bagel and Zoosk didn't respond. (All three companies ban people bedevilled of felonies.) Bumble — which does not explicitly ban people with felonies but booted Hernandez anyway — asked to set up a call, then stopped responding. Facebook Dating and Grindr, which don't take bans, didn't respond on the record. A representative for Encounter Group said that only 2 of the visitor's apps — Skout and GROWLr — have a ban, based on policies information technology inherited when it caused those apps. The representative said Encounter Group would reconsider that role of the policy.

Friction match Group came under scrutiny later on a 2019 ProPublica investigation found registered sexual activity offenders on the company's free apps, which include Tinder, Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. That's because the company only did the pricey background checks needed to enforce the felony ban on its paid site, Friction match.com.

After implementing new safety measures last twelvemonth, in March the company appear its investment in Garbo, a nonprofit aiming to create more accessible background checks, focused on preventing dating violence. When Garbo's app launches later this year, users volition be able to pay what the organization describes as a small fee, enter a first proper noun and a phone number and in a few minutes get a stranger'southward criminal record, or at to the lowest degree office of information technology. (A Lucifer Grouping representative said any money collected will get to Garbo; Friction match won't receive any profits.)

"We realized that the opportunity to build an equitable background check existed with the focus on reporting violence," founder Kathryn Kosmides said. "We brand the effort to filter out drug possession, loitering, things similar that."

But Garbo will besides provide access to arrests and cases that never resulted in convictions. Pointing out that many abusers aren't convicted as often as they're defendant, Kosmides said those records volition assistance people make more than informed decisions. Someday she hopes to expand the service to vet passengers on ride-share apps like Uber and Lyft.

Legal experts say that relying on arrests and dismissed cases undermines the presumption of innocence and won't necessarily improve safety. And they annotation that while some dating app users may feel safer if people who committed certain crimes are filtered out of an app, prior convictions may non exist an indication of danger.

The felony bans as well have not stopped complaints of sexual violence linked to dating apps. A recent ProPublica investigation based on interviews with more than than 50 current and former dating visitor employees found that they lacked clear policies to forbid and respond to declared assaults.

"Y'all could have someone with an onetime drug confidence, and how is it keeping anyone safer to ban them?" said Jenny Roberts, a law professor at American University who studies collateral consequences. "But a electric current drug user in a dainty neighborhood that police aren't policing, they're allowed on that website. Information technology creates a false sense of security."

Image: Hand holding a phone that reads," Your Account has been banned". — Hernandez received this detect from Tinder that his business relationship was banned. Zerb Mellish / for The Marshall Project

Instead, experts said improved dating app prophylactic could come from better identity verification practices. And helping people who are seeking long-term relationships could brand everyone safer.

"The things that brand us safer are things like having a stable family, getting married, existence able to buy a business firm — participating in all these social institutions that take been around for a long time helps make sure the crime rate doesn't become up," said Lageson, the Rutgers sociologist. "So if you're worried about public safety, the best thing you can do is bring people into relationships."

Though Hernandez, the former prisoner, can't bear witness that he got booted because of his felony, he says it was the merely way his account violated the terms of service. "How tin you concur something against me that I did in 1993?"

He's hoping that the companies volition reconsider their policies. But for now, he's doing his online dating on Facebook.