‘It’s overkill’: Should sex offenders be banned from the NC State Fair?

In the face of a tragedy, it’s difficult to parse out the best course of action. Egregious acts of terror or deviance lead people to seek punitive justice without nuance. It’s how we ended up with mandatory minimums, and why we have to take our shoes off in airport security.

Sex offenders in particular are seldom given the nuance and rehabilitation we afford to other people with criminal histories. Their lives are forever affected by the convictions they carry, just like other people convicted of crimes. But unlike some others, they face additional punishment at the hands of the state, even after they’ve served their time. In North Carolina, residents who are registered sex offenders (meaning they have been convicted of sexual contact with a minor or a sexually violent offense) are not allowed to attend any agricultural fair, including the N.C. State Fair underway in Raleigh. It was signed into law in 2008 as part of a larger effort to bar sex offenders from regular aspects of life.

While some parts of that law were declared unconstitutional in 2016, the state fair rule was kept in place.

Laws like this come from an understandable desire to protect people, particularly children. The reality is that it’s a difficult law to enforce that does not differentiate between varying degrees of sex crimes, or take into consideration the everyday situations that are most responsible for childhood sexual abuse. Advocates for sex offenders see it as an extra burden that is not applied to other offenders with criminal records of violence.

“It’s egregious and outrageous. It’s overkill,” Robin Vander Wall, president of North Carolina Association for Rational Sex Offense Law, said in a press release. “This is a matter of fundamental fairness and equal protection under both the state and federal constitutions.”

To be clear: Sex crimes are horrible. Offenders have violated the body autonomy of another human. Survivors of sexual violence have to cope with these violations. Some of those survivors were children when they were abused. The thought process behind the law is understandable.

But under the law, people convicted of crimes must serve their punishments. Once those punishments are fulfilled, they should be allowed to re-enter society. That’s how it works for other criminal offenses, and it’s the best way to reduce the number of people who re-offend. Even people convicted of manslaughter or assault are allowed to return to society and try to be better people. We don’t ban them from the fair.

The sex offender registry writ large does not categorize people based on the severity of their crime, their age when they were added to the registry or whether they have multiple offenses. Someone convicted of having sex with their 15-year-old girlfriend at 17 should not be treated as equal to someone who has molested multiple children. Under this law, however, they are.

There has been one publicized instance of random sexual assault of a minor at the N.C. State Fair since 2000. The man arrested for the crime had no prior record, and was employed by one of the vendors.

The more we treat registered sex offenders as boogeymen, the harder it is for us to accept the reality of when and where child sexual abuse occurs. The vast majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone the child knows. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 70% of sexual assault occurs in a home; outside of residences. These assaults occur mostly in secluded areas, like on roadways, woods and motels.

Sex offenders, both in North Carolina and nationally, have lower recidivism rates than other violent offenders. Given that, we should at least consider why their punishments must continue for decades after they have been released from prison.