Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Where I Stand: Self-discipline is key weapon in fight against crime

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT are the focus of North Las Vegas Mayor James Seastrand in today's guest column. He cites self-discipline as the controlling factor in lowering the crime rate across the nation.

IN INCREASING NUMBERS, the police arrest crime suspects, the courts hold trials and the guilty are jailed. When will this upward spiral be reversed?

The answer, of course, is when there are more people who develop the self-discipline to choose law-abiding behavior rather than law-breaking behavior. Self-discipline that helps a person choose lawful behavior can be developed through learning a sense of respect and caring for individuals and their property. This is crime prevention at its best. Unfortunately, many people don't sustain good behavior out of a sense of respect and caring, so the fear of punishment for a crime becomes a learning factor.

If a person does not have respect and care for other people and their property, he or she is at risk of committing a crime because of not having developed the self-discipline for good behavior. Assisting ourselves and others to develop the self-discipline that results in law-abiding behavior is a grand pursuit of crime prevention and will pay huge dividends to ourselves and all society.

Parents, teachers, coaches and leaders in civic and church organizations who teach good character and values are real crime-prevention heroes. They help kids and adults learn right from wrong and, importantly, help them learn the self-discipline to say "yes" to doing what's right and to say "no" to doing wrong things.

Individuals who have developed good self-discipline stay with it consistently and teach others to do likewise.

Opposite the heroes are the crime villains. Those in the villains' pool have not received, or have ignored, self-discipline training that motivates good behavior and have chosen to be a criminal and harm people and/or their property.

It would be great if there were no crimes committed because all mankind practiced genuine respect and care for the well-being of their fellow men. This isn't realistic, at least in this stage of our civil existence, so the fear factor enters in.

If a person has fearful anxiety from knowing that the punishment for crime will have the certainty of discomfort and suffering, that fear can cause one to choose to control his or her behavior to not be a law-breaker. Tough and unfailing action against criminals by significantly punishing them sends a message that being found guilty of a crime brings a certainty of discomfort and suffering.

Significant punishment for ill deeds -- and the fearful message that sends -- is a rightful crime-prevention procedure and increases the potential for the development of law-abiding self-discipline. To carry out the apprehension and penalization of criminals, we need a good corps of police and judges and punishment that causes discomfort proportionate to the crime. For this reason, we should back the hiring of more police, providing sufficient judges and adequate court space and jail facilities.

When the criminal has an uncomfortable and undesirable experience in jail, it may have a deterrent effect. This I found out a short time ago when, at my own expense, I traveled to Phoenix to look at the Maricopa County sheriff's jail program. It focuses on a mission to show that "crime never pays."

County prisoners stay behind bars in a tiny cell for about 23 of every 24 hours. They have bologna sandwiches to eat, no coffee, no smoking, no girlie magazines, no public television and no movies. Or, as more than 1,000 prisoners have done, they volunteer to move into an outside tent under the hot sun. There, they have more space and freedom but must labor and obey rules such as keeping themselves and their surroundings tidy and clean.

If they don't develop the self-discipline to follow the rules, back they go into a cramped cell behind bars. Few prisoners go back to a cell, considering it worse than suffering through Arizona summer heat with no air conditioning in their tent, except for a small fan making a little air movement.

I remembered my own military bivouac training where we lived in tents in the San Antonio, Texas, desert in the summer. And I remembered our military troops who fought in Desert Storm and lived in the hot Saudi Arabia and Iraqi deserts in tents.

Prisoners, with a concrete slab under their bunks, have it better off than our valued military troops housed in tents, with only dirt for their floor and no fan to move the hot air.

As I walked through the tent compound and asked prisoner after prisoner what they thought of being in this jail, without exception, each one said, "I don't want to come back here." The reaction from these prisoners fits the deterrent factor posted on jail bulletin boards: "If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime."

If a prisoner's experience in a lousy jail causes him or her to not want to go back to jail and helps him or her develop the self-discipline necessary to keep from committing another crime, that is what crime prevention is about.

Let's assist individuals to learn good self-discipline with its resultant good behavior, and the time will come when crime will decrease instead of increase.

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