There is a pervasive idea among the progressives who run American cities that there is no difference between a society that keeps career criminals behind bars and one that allows those career criminals to run free throughout their cities. It defies all logic.

Washington, D.C., is in a crime crisis of its own making, and it goes back to this same mistaken view of crime and human nature. Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb summarized this view back in January, when he said the following: “We as a city and a community need to be much more focused on prevention and surrounding young people and their families with resources if we want to be safer in the long run. We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.”