If you'd spend enough money on social services, they could certainly use these systems to send out people and help the potential criminals. I guess you'd quickl

If you'd spend enough money on social services, they could certainly use these systems to send out people and help the potential criminals. I guess you'd quickly see that these areas will also have problematic schools where extra money is probably a way better crime prevention method than policing. The problem with this is that the effect is not easy to measure. If you bring down the crime rate by policing than this can directly be associated with the cost spent. If you improve a school and the crime rate goes down the effect is much harder to measure, and cost/benefit will be in different organizations within the government.