A Person’s Inaction Is Not Always Considered As “Doing Nothing”
A person who is guilty by association takes part in a crime, even if they do not commit the crime themselves. In a scenario where a person is said to be guilty by association, their having “done nothing” would be false because they helped the criminal in some way. I am going to present a scenario that proves that one’s absences of action is not considered “doing nothing” and why that is the case.
Guilty by association refers to “the attribution of guilt without any proof on individuals solely for the reason that those whom they associate with are guilty. ” If someone is said to be guilty by association they have information about the crime unknown to others.
Consider this thought experiment: Fred is a very angry person. His mom made him go to church with her this past Sunday and he did not like what the preacher had to say. In fact, he did not agree with it at all. He decides that he does not like churches and wants to cause some trouble. He recruits his friend Victor to drive him around one night. Victor thought that Fred just wanted to drive around and talk, but instead Fred asks Victor to drive to a few churches. Victor drives Fred from church to church and watches Fred go in each one with a dark bag. The next morning on the news, Victor sees that pipe bombs had gone off in several churches in the community, all of these churches that he had driven Fred to the night before. He does not tell anyone that he knows what Fred has done. He keeps it a secret while the police try to find the suspect for months.
Victor is guilty by association in this situation and it cannot be said that he has “done nothing” for two reasons. The first reason is because he had a chance to ask Fred why he was entering each church with a black bag. Instead, he kept driving and did not ask any questions. The second reason he has not “done nothing” is because he did not reveal any information with the police after the bombs went off. In this scenario, keeping quiet is not having “done nothing” because sharing that Fred had been at the churches the night the bombs went off with a dark bag would have helped the police solve the case. This in turn would ensure that Fred did not harm any more churches or people. This scenario shows some signs of consequentialism in that Victor did not know the consequences of his action of driving Fred around until after he found out that Fred was using him and his car as a way to plant bombs.
Another way of looking at this would be from the utilitarianism point of view. If Victor reports Fred’s action to the police, preventing Fred from causing more damage, he will choose the option that would cause the least amount of pain for the church congregations in the future. Someone might object to this and say that if Victor had asked Fred what he was doing and Fred told him the truth, Victor still would have been guilty by association. This would not have been the case if Victor had immediately disclosed the information with the police authority. Victor, although he would not have kept his friend’s confidentiality, would have saved several churches from being destroyed, which would have been for the greater good of the community.
The scenario I have presented with Fred and Victor goes to show that sometimes, a person’s inaction cannot always be classified as having “done nothing”. A person’s inaction can cause more harm than it is apparent at the time of the inaction. When Victor refrained from asking Fred his intent and reporting his prior knowledge to the police, his “doing nothing” cannot be said to have been inaction.
