It comes after a groundswell of community concern over cars that continue to be stolen from driveways and later found on fire or burnt-out.

Kevin Wales, a former Wagga mayor and patrol commander, led the way with community-driven policing two decades ago and was involved in setting up one of Australia’s first restorative justice programs.

It made perpetrators confront those they had harmed, pitting young people, their parents and high-profile police in the same room in an attempt to cut reoffending rates.

Mr Wales urged a revival of those police-led efforts.

“It worked,” he said.

“About 95 per cent of the time juveniles would pay the compensation caused by their actions – it created tremendous reduction in reoffending juveniles and the victims were happy too.”

However, Mr Wales said victim conferencing was eventually taken out of police hands and handed to the courts. Courts have since offered restorative justice programs to troubled youth for many years.

“But you get the best results when they are in a police station, face to face with their victim and a police officer in uniform,” Mr Wales said. “The leader of those conferences needs to be a police officer.”

Mr Wales said police-led programs would be easy to implement and could go some way to alleviate the frustrations of victims, who believe offenders get away with a “slap on the wrist” for serious crime.

One of those victims was former deputy mayor Michael Georgiou, who had two cars destroyed in two weeks.

“Why should the public have to pay the price?” he said. “A slap on the wrist is not going to solve it. It’s time we have a rethink and come up with something stricter.”

On Tuesday, Wagga police chief Superintendent Bob Noble conceded punishments to young offenders were often not in-keeping with victim expectations.