Dear Graeme,

My name is James McWilliams. I'm the project officer in the safer communities section at the city council. My boss is Lynda Kilkelly, the safer communities manager.

As you may already have heard, the city council, in partnership with the police, intends to start a new restorative justice system in the city during 2012–13. This is something we very much want and need to do in full partnership with agencies such as your own.

The proposed system for Cambridge will sit in the middle of, and complement, the lower-level ‘street RJ’ presently being operated by the police in Cambridgeshire, and the higher level RJ conferencing which acts in addition to formal charging and sentencing. This middle level of crime and disorder is likely to include such things as damage to property, minor theft, threatening behaviour, rowdy street behaviour including misuse of motor vehicles, neighbour nuisance and noise nuisance. Referrals will be made by the police and it is likely that many of these will concern young people having their first encounter with the criminal justice system.

The proposal will additionally cover nuisance neighbours and no-fault neighbour disputes, but this will be a separate part of the scheme.

We want to run the scheme according to the neighbourhood resolution panel model, currently in use in Sheffield and elsewhere, where trained community volunteers facilitate the meetings between the wronged person and wrongdoer. I guess you’ll be very familiar with this idea. We intend to recruit as a council employee a neighbourhood resolution panel co-ordinator and it will be the co-ordinator’s responsibility to go on to recruit, and arrange the training of, the volunteer community facilitators.

I would very much welcome any comments you might want to make at this stage. In due course I’ll write to you to invite you and other criminal justice system partners to a meeting with a view to establishing a governing body to oversee and help develop the scheme.

Please call me if there is anything here you would like to discuss.

Regards and thanks

James