In the UK, spending by financial services firms on AML compliance [1] exceeds all police spending [2] (£28.7 Bn vs £21.47Bn).
This represents a massive misallocation of resources. Public safety would almost certainly be improved if we doubled police spending by slashing AML burdens by 2/3rds.
Unfortunately it's hard for politicians address crime by raising taxes to fund real police but easy for them to attempt to address crime by increasing AML regulation, even if the latter is barely effective.