The war on urban crime is No. 1 on the agenda of most big city mayors -- including John Street. His much-touted Operation Safe Streets was credited with a citywide reduction in street-corner drug sales last summer and praised by local and national community activists. Then the bill came due and the rumblings began. A half-million dollars a month in police overtime alone made the program slightly less attractive to some tax-conscious citizens. Couple that with the projected 36 percent of next year's city budget dedicated to crime, and people start asking, "At what cost safety?" The problem, says former City Councilman Ed Schwartz, is that the notion of crime prevention as a means of boosting the city's bottom line hasn't been made clear to the voters. Schwartz aims to change that.

Schwartz, now the president of the Institute for the Study of Civic Values, a Center City think tank and urban studies organization, has put together a "Neighborhood Guide to the City Budget." The guide is a revealing look into where and how the city spends its money, and on what. Since his days on Council, Schwartz has been active citywide getting neighbors involved with quality-of-life issues like crime, welfare reform and family services.

"Here's the issue in a nutshell," Schwartz says with his trademark enthusiasm. "The city is looking for ways to save money, some $200 million a year, right? And 36 percent of the budget goes to crime. So how much would a 25-percent reduction in overall crime save us per year? How about a 50-percent reduction in crime? You don't have to be a budget expert to figure out that a significant reduction in the crime rate would yield significant gains in the city's coffers. So the question here is how do we absolutely reduce crime? We need a careful, systematic look at whether we're getting the most for our crime prevention and law enforcement dollars and people need to be shown the fiscal advantage of crime prevention programs."

According to Schwartz's neighborhood guide, of the $3.279 billion we raise in city taxes, $1.18 billion is spent on police, sheriffs, courts, prisons, the District Attorney's office and public defenders. The $485-million Police Department budget is 10 times larger than that of the Recreation Department. The Philadelphia Prisons budget is five times that of the Free Library. Moreover, the budget increase to fight crime is four times greater than the increases in fire, sanitation, recreation and library costs. Not that the money is ill spent, but Schwartz dreams of what vast neighborhood improvements could be made with the money we now spend to arrest and incarcerate criminals.

Schwartz says that some of the methods of reducing crime will be controversial. Take recidivism, for instance. Most low-level street crimes like burglary or robbery are committed by the same perps over and over, he says. They're arrested, convicted and serve short sentences, then released to commit the same crimes. Take those guys out of the equation for a much longer period, and those crime rates plunge. Here's the problem, he admits. By targeting people who have a history of certain crimes, officials are opening themselves up for all sorts of claims against individual liberties, like racial, class or ethnic profiling. In fact, Schwartz admits that there are a lot of holes in his theories, but that doesn't bother him. He just wants people talking and debating the issue, and starting a real discussion on how much crime costs us all in dollars and cents.

"Crime disproportionately affects the poor," Schwartz says, "as both victim and perpetrator. But an anti-crime effort is not an anti-poor people effort. All of us -- rich, poor and in-between -- need to make it clear that crime is not acceptable. Affluence is not a justification for greed, and poverty is not an excuse for criminal behavior. Crime is a sickness that affects our communities. We have to recognize it as such and work on a cure."

It's a nice theory Schwartz has got there, city officials claim, but not necessarily one that stands the test of real politics and city budgets.

"In theory, if crime is down it would yield budget savings, but that may not pan out in the real world," says mayoral spokesperson Barbara Grant.

"Often there are increased costs somewhere in the budget that may cancel out savings elsewhere. The increases for the costs of Homeland Security, for instance, may come from another source's savings. As you know, there is a lot of give-and-take. That said, the mayor is keenly aware of how crime significantly affects the quality of life in Philadelphia. That's the theory behind Operation Safe Streets. We will continue to look for ways to reduce the crime rate and increase the quality of life for all our citizens," Grant says.

Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson Inspector William Colarulo agrees with Grant.

"It sounds nice, sure, but remember that any reduction in crime can only be maintained by investing the resources necessary to keep the crime rate down. If you stop spending on crime as soon as the rate goes down, it wouldn't stay down very long," says Colarulo.

"To the extent that an honest debate over crime and its costs will benefit all neighborhoods, especially those most ravaged by the effects of crime, I think the effort is well worth it."