5,800 criminal cases settled out of court in one year in the West Midlands

A total of 5,794 were handled in this way up to December with 2,442 of those being in the Black Country.

A community remedy gives victims of low level crime - such as shop theft and antic social behaviour - a say in the punishment of offenders without the case having to go to court.

These usually involve a face to face meeting with the culprit to outline the impact of the offence and receive a personal apology or another form of reparation.

Somebody caught stealing from a shop for the first time could either give the goods back or donate an equivalent sum to charity before going to say sorry to staff at the scene of the crime.

A tailor-made community remedy has turned round the life of a 34-year-old single parent in dire straights when caught shoplifting in Dudley. She was drinking heavily after the threat of eviction over rent arrears and unpaid loans to buy clothing for her child had plunged the woman into depression

She was ordered to get help with her alcohol abuse together with debt management assistance from Citizens Advice and get mental health staff to advise on the best ways to beat depression and anxiety.

Ten months later she is still at the same address after sorting out her debt repayment, has quit the booze, is working with a counsellor to end her depression - and is being helped to find a job.

A 41-year-old man whose increasingly short temper put his job and relationship in jeopardy was instructed to attend a victim awareness course - and asked for assistance with anger management - as part of his community resolution after committing a public order offence in March. Since then he has not committed further crime, has kept his job with an engineering company and is still with his partner.

The move to community remedies - part of schemes that now see up to 15,000 criminal cases a year being settled out of court in the West Midlands by also using conditional cautions and cannabis warnings - is backed by both police chiefs and senior Crown Prosecution Service(CPS) lawyers. Figures suggest it could cut reoffending by as much as a third.

Supt Karl Fellows from West Midlands Police's Criminal Justice Services, said: "They are a common sense, effective way of dealing with lower-level offences. The decision is always in line with the views and wishes of victims who often play an active role in designing the terms of the resolution.

"The offender must show remorse and there could be an element of punishment, perhaps compensation or repairing damage, but officers will also look to create a resolution that addresses any underlying causes of offending behaviour.

"Community Resolutions are a way of giving first time offenders, who may have made a one-off error of judgement, a second chance which does not involve them receiving a criminal record that could affect their future job prospects. Overwhelmingly, the feedback we continue to get from the public around the use of these is extremely positive.

"They also remove a vast amount of bureaucracy from the criminal justice process, giving victims a swift resolution and allowing police to focus more time and effort on more serious cases."

Since June 2015 there have been 668 cases settled outside of court by the CPS. This includes those dropped at pre-charge stage when a caution was regarded as more suitable and cases that were originally charged but subsequently dropped.