In the gig-economy era, public safety and social justice can be secured simultaneously, according to HKUST’s Yanzhen Chen and Yatang Lin, working with a colleague. While the potential criminality of ride-share drivers has raised concern, governments can work with platforms and communities to safeguard riders without penalizing marginalized groups.

Focusing on transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft, the researchers uncovered negative effects of strict driver screening. While background check laws (BCLs) aim to protect riders by banning TNC drivers with convictions or arrest records, they may perpetuate inequality among groups overrepresented in criminal-justice cases. Moreover, by denying legitimate work to marginalized people with criminal records, BCLs “push them toward illicit activities for financial survival.”

The authors’ proposed solution is a “trilogy of public safety guardians”: government, TNCs, and the community. BCLs have the exclusory function of preventing encounters between riders and potential criminals. However, the exclusion of all offenders is counterproductive. “High-stringency BCLs are not more effective in reducing TNC crimes,” say the researchers, “but they lead to more severe unintended adverse effects on property crimes.”

TNCs play their part by providing safety features for riders, such as reminders to check the license plate or buttons to call 911. Instead of exclusion, this represents the use of deterrence to minimize crime. Crucially, the third guardian inhibits the negative social effects of exclusion while bolstering deterrence: community provision of “reentry programs, unemployment benefits, and other gig employment” buffers the blowback from BCLs, while “the police workforce can augment the deterrence effectiveness of in-app safety features.”

“The trilogy of guardians perspective rejects the assumption of a mere trade-off between two goals,” the authors note. Instead of “public safety versus inclusion of marginalized individuals,” both can be addressed through inter-stakeholder collaboration, with digital platforms actively contributing to socially equitable outcomes.