NC: Should “Sex Offender Cooties” infect the political race?

A new article in Ms. Magazine examines the controversy surrounding North Carolina Republican politics and the association between candidates and Harvey West, a former Republican Party official who was convicted of crimes involving children, served his sentence, and was subsequently removed from the state’s sex-offender registry.

The article raises questions about whether political figures should be judged for associating with someone who has a criminal record. If this question sounds familiar, FAC wrote about this phenomenon earlier this year in our Weekly Update “End Guilt by Association” – what we jokingly called the “sex offender cooties” problem. The idea is simple: somehow the stigma attached to a person with a sex-offense conviction becomes contagious. Employers are afraid to hire them. Landlords are afraid to rent to them. Friends and family are afraid to associate with them. And now, apparently, politicians can be accused of wrongdoing simply because they know one.

There is an important distinction between accountability for someone’s own conduct and guilt by association. There’s also a distinction between what someone did decades ago and the person they are today. That distinction was reflected in comments made by North Carolina State Sen. Norman Sanderson, who said of West, “I’ve always found Harvey to be an exceptional leader … honest and direct to the point. … He’s done a good job.” Sanderson also said, “I don’t know what the circumstances were in that situation — I’ve never asked — but I know the man now, and whatever happened to him during that time, he’s not that same person.”

Those comments do not require anyone to minimize the underlying offenses or dismiss the experiences of victims. They make the point that people can change, and the person who served a sentence years ago may not be the same person decades later. That is precisely the principle that registry reform advocates have been trying to put back into the conversation.

Associating with someone on the registry doesn’t pretend that past conduct didn’t happen. It doesn’t erase victims. And it doesn’t mean that one agrees with every decision someone made (or makes today). Ostracizing someone who associates with a person on the registry is not about public safety. It’s purely about stigma.

Society must recognize and appreciate the possibility that there are hundreds of thousands of people on this registry who have spent years, if not decades, living lawfully and desperately trying to rebuild their lives after a conviction.

The take-aways from the Ms. article should be that people are not their worst moment – if we want someone to be law abiding and productive, we need to give them the opportunity to be law abiding and productive. And guilt is not contagious.