[silexia]

Cracking skulls is actually the more humane solution. If a city makes harsh examples of a few criminals, it dissuades many more potential criminals from ever getting started.

Allowing criminals and homeless to run rampant will lead to the rapid increases in both we have seen in SF. Then there still will be an inevitable backlash, and that will involve the cracking of far more skulls than would have happened by doing it early. If a city never enforces its laws, the criminals will crack far more innocent skulls.

You can't escape the cracking of skulls, you just choose who does the cracking and how many get hurt.