Manchester residents are taking the first steps toward creating a criminal-justice system all their own.

Once established, it would be a pilot for neighborhoods in the city. The system is based on both a revolutionary and old idea: that offenses in the neighborhood are best handled by those most interested in righting the wrongs -- the neighbors.

It is not vigilante justice. In fact, called restorative justice, it is designed to heal the offender, the victim and the community.

"The offender, victim and community are the ones who are involved, not the state," said Jerome Jackson, who initiated the concept in Manchester. He is the program coordinator for the Manchester Citizens Corp. "You pay your debt to the person you harmed rather than to society."

The Center for Victims of Violence and Crime, a nonprofit in East Liberty, would likely help Mr. Jackson train Manchester residents as mediators on accountability panels. The center also makes first contact with the victim to find out if he is willing to discuss solutions with the offender and a mediator.

Some panels deal with the offender and not the victim, but for a case to be diverted from the courts, the victim must participate. The police and neighborhoods can work together without permission from the courts, said Jim Rieland, director of Allegheny County Probation. The neighborhood's leverage is that, if the offender does not live up to the agreement he participates in forging -- say, to remove graffiti from a shop window and serve a neighborhood project for 25 hours -- he has to go to juvenile court, he said.

Last year, Mr. Jackson, 45, began plugging the idea of a neighborhood resolution system to the nonprofit's board, getting feedback from other mediators and plotting a strategy. Neighborhood meetings started two months ago. Manchester Citizens will get feedback for a workable plan by knocking on residents' doors.

Mr. Jackson, a 2008 recipient of the mediation center's peace-partner awards, has trained mediators for nonprofits, companies and the state Department of Corrections. He says some parts of the traditional justice system, such as community service removed from the offended community, "make no sense."

"Usually, society doesn't look at the effect crime has on the community or that there needs to be repair," he said. "As it is now, lawyers tell the victim and offender not to talk to each other."

The Manchester experiment will begin with youth offenders, but the ultimate goal is to handle all crime and disputes in the neighborhood, he said.

Georgia Washington, a Manchester resident since 1982, said she is "very optimistic" that restorative justice would serve the neighborhood well, especially in the residents' new-found license to impose standards.

"Don't you think that's the problem today, that young people don't have that [inhibition] because people have grown apart from one another?" she said. On the street, she said, "you get this cold stare back. The kinship is gone, and it hurts."

Restorative justice sounds like a return to the day, she said, "when we had time to know our neighbors and interact with them. Sometimes, you need to go back. We had it right once."

Stephanie Walsh, executive director of the mediation center, said both sides are usually afraid at first. "You're facing the person you knocked down," or the person who burgled your house. "A victim will often say, 'Why did you pick my house?' and the offender, though a stranger, might say, 'I didn't know it was your house.' "

Such a response is a sign the offender understands the victim has a face and the offense was personal, she said. "Crime and violence have a way of disconnecting us and building barriers. The mediator helps them have conversations, supports each in telling their story" and guides them to resolution. "These efforts start to build bridges again, to recreate what is called a neighborhood."

Manchester's would be a first among city neighborhoods, but restorative justice has made inroads into 44 states, including Pennsylvania.

Allegheny County's juvenile courts have run a restorative justice component with the mediation center as a contractor since 1995, said Mr. Rieland.

Changes in state law that year mandated the juvenile justice system "address community protection, victim restoration and youth competencies," he said. "A small number of youth go through this now." They are chosen based on their crimes. "We are trying to make it part of daily life."

Ms. Walsh said accountability panels have been mediating with youth for low-level offenses in Duquesne, Wilkinsburg and McKeesport for four years, with help from the mediation center. They are still too recent to assess, she said, as "it always takes three years for a new program" to prove itself.

In Chester County, Gwenn S. Knapp, a magisterial district judge, started the Young Adult Community Conferencing program to bring college students charged with public drunkenness, noise violations and disorderly conduct to mediation with the people they offend.

Restorative justice is a growing trend in court systems, school systems, towns and neighborhoods because it does reduce repeat offenses and increase victims' satisfaction, said Susan Blackburn, a specialist in the field for the Juvenile Court Judges Commission.

In a lengthy study titled "Restorative Justice: The Evidence," the Smith Institute, a think-tank in Great Britain, indicates repeat offenses among both adults and youth and the financial cost to the public were all reduced.

"The communities hold them very accountable because the peace in the neighborhood has been disrupted, and relationships have been weakened," said Ms. Blackburn. "The community will tell [the offender] what his harm feels like," she said, citing an example: " 'It was not just a TV you stole from Betty's house, but Betty will not sleep well for years.'

"The whole community will keep an eye on this fellow, and he knows it."