Over two years, 23-year-old Steven Pugh violated almost every condition of his court-ordered probation for carrying a gun in the nation's capital: He tested positive for PCP, was charged with assault for allegedly dragging his girlfriend across a floor and pleaded guilty to committing a robbery in Maryland. For months, he had disappeared entirely from his probation officer's radar screen.

Still, his probation was not revoked, sparing him from a year in jail. In August 2015, Pugh was still failing to show up for drug tests and other appointments, but his probation officer did not press for him to be locked up. The next month, a father of three in Southeast was shot and killed. Pugh was arrested fleeing the scene and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Now you might think the Pugh case is an extreme example, something the Post (a liberal paper) trots out for shock value.

A version of Pugh's case plays out frequently in the District. About 150 times a year [roughly every other workday], the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency [CSOSA] loses track of offenders it classifies as high risk, the agency acknowledges. Several hundred additional offenders classified as lower risks also go missing, and scores of them turn up as suspects in new crimes, according to court records....

About once a week, a D.C. offender under federal supervision ends up as either a victim or a suspect in a homicide investigation. Last year, nearly one out of four people charged with a killing in the District was under CSOSA supervision, while one out of five victims also was in its care, according to agency and police data.

That was once a week and homicide investigation. (You also have to love the unconscious irony of the word "care," care being was reformers relentlessly tell us we should give instead of incarceration).

Offenders under CSOSA's supervision were charged with nearly 1,500 crimes of violence in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to documents submitted to Congress.

That was 1500 crimes of violence in one year.  And in one city.

Nancy M. Ware, director of CSOSA since 2012, said the agency first tries to give offenders every chance to succeed before it labels someone an absconder, potentially sending an offender back to jail or prison.

"Sometimes a person is in a loss of contact for several days because they have a death in their family, they have some issue with children. There are all kinds of reasons that we lose contact," she said. "With our population, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt."

Translation:  Every excuse is made in favor of the criminal, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence that said excuses result in murder and mayhem on a regular basis.

And while we're at it, you have to love the notion that, with "our population"  --  that being a population of thugs  --  "we want to give them the benefit of a doubt."

Do any of these carefree halfwits want to give the next victim, never more than a matter of hours away, the benefit of a doubt?  Or the benefit of anything any sober person could consider serious or even vaguely humane thinking?

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Our country tried "reform" before, in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, and got a nationwide crime wave for its trouble.  In Washington, DC, for some reason, we are continuing to try it, with identical, bloody results.

Please, Jeff Sessions:  Run, don't walk, to the Attorney General's office.