It is extremely complex trying to figure out where to spend the limited funds. Basically trial an error.
Would spending more in the inner city mean less crime? If so would that then mean you need less police? As you can see not that simple.
Left - defund police
Right - spend more on police
In theory it would definitely be far more effective to spend money on prevention rather than on police to deal with crime. Do you spend money on traffic control and driver safety initiatives or on top rate trauma departments and emergency first responders to deal with the victims? Well targeted initiatives such as vocational training and business mentoring, incentivization of effort and work ethic, efforts to create and preserve a stable family unit, and a host of other such initiatives would not only yield results, but there would be a multiplier effect as success begets success, and those successes become role models who can guide others on a path out of the ghetto.
However, if history is a guide, the money will pour into all the wrong places. A failing education system. “Community organizers” who make the most noise whom politicians can’t afford to offend. Bottomless pits of funding pandering to special interests. Welfare programs that perpetuate the misery of the inner city folks. Alternative lifestyle sensitivity training and safe sex education that pander to those with that agenda and do zero to put these folks on the path to upward mobility.
Couple that with a push to reduce policing and end quality of life enforcement and you end up with scary subway cars, drug and alcohol infested streets, lawlessness and violence, and a further working class and retail establishment flight from these neighborhoods, further perpetuating the cycle of despair.
How do we know this? Because this was done in the past in NYC, and those were the results. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.".