It goes by the unginly name of “restorative justice.”It’s an alternative way of dealing with crime. Instead of pitting the government against the offender, restorative justice brings three parties into the act: the offender, the victim and the community. The objective is to heal the wound rather than simply to punish and avenge wrongful behavior.

Fairfield and Mount Desert Island have been handling some juvenile cases through this process for the past 18 months. Bangor and Hampden have started more recently. An offender, often flanked by his parents, sits at a table across from the victim of, say, a burglary or shoplifting, as well as some neighbors trained to conduct such sessions.

The homeowner or shopkeeper looks the offender in the eye and asks whether the offender understands how much he or she has harmed the victim and why he or she has committed such an act.

These confrontations have led to apology, written agreements to make restitution, and possibly community service. At best, the offender, the victim and the community all come out better off for the process.

What’s new is that Ellsworth is about to start a pilot program as the first Maine community to apply restorative justice to adult offenders. The Ellsworth organization, which calls itself the Hancock County Community Reparations Board, hopes to take up its first case in late September. A working group of 10 people has been formed, and another 15 or 20 have expressed interest, says Renna Hegg, an Ellsworth probation officer with the Maine Department of Corrections. She took a weeklong federally sponsored training course in Colorado and is guiding the Ellsworth committee.

“Adults are a different kettle of fish,” says Edward F. Snyder, chairman of the Mount Desert Island Restorative Justice Program. That program has handled a dozen juvenile cases, mostly with success. Most of them were first offenders, being held for shoplifting, vandalism, or drug, alcohol or tobacco violations.

Under a recently enacted statute, an adult may apply for entry into the program only after being convicted and sentenced to a term of less than nine months or put on probation. Marital violence and sex offenses are specifically ruled out. The Ellsworth board is asking prosecutors for referrals and soon hopes to be selecting its first case.

So who is the chairman of the Ellsworth board? There is no chairman, says Hegg. All business is handled by consensus, without the usual organizational structure and formality. Members take turns taking on different aspects of the program. They thought up the name of their group, using the words of the statute that authorizes such efforts. An Ellsworth police officer, Dorothy Small, handles routine details as coordinator.

The Ellsworth working group plans its own training sessions, as do the groups in other communities, says Hegg. “We don’t say, “This is what you are going to do.’ So each community does things a little differently.”

Hegg would like to see the adult program eventually become a complete alternative to court action instead of coming only after conviction. But she says this might require further legislative action.

Adult programs of this sort have been operating in Vermont and Minnesota for three years and much longer in Canada, England and Australia. But Maine is not really a laggard. Local police officers and prosecutors have been bringing victims and offenders together for many years in informal sessions to arrange apology, restitution, and community service.

In a sense, restorative justice in Maine is a new name for something that has been going on for a long time.

This alternative form of justice probably will work best not in big cities but in smaller communities, where most people know each other and their families and backgrounds. The Ellsworth group surely will be on the lookout for any offender who is good at acting out tearful remorse and seems to be trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

If you see the merit in trying to promote healing instead of relying mainly on punishment and would like to help, you might consider volunteering in your own community.