OARS funding Criminal Justice

INL is one of the leading international foreign assistance providers in CAR, and has an excellent reputation among the CAR government and the UN mission as a committed partner to building the capacity of CAR's criminal justice institutions. INL has committed more than $40 million to help re-operationalize and re-establish CAR's law enforcement, justice, and corrections institutions during the past four years. This project seeks to provide training and technical assistance to strengthen the ability of CAR civil society organizations, lawyers, police investigators, prosecutors, and judges to ensure justice for SGBV survivors and crime victims in Bangui and CAR's provinces, while also providing urgently needed legal services to SGBV survivors and victims of other serious crimes and human rights violations .

The Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI) National Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program provides resources and opportunities to enable police agencies to identify and define their most pressing crime problems and institute lasting operational and organizational changes that foster reliance on and effective use of evidence-based practices, data, and technology.

The fiscal year (FY) 2019 Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program (BWC PIP) directly supports key priorities of the Department of Justice by promoting the safety of law enforcement officers and citizens and capturing an unbiased recording of police interactions with the public. BWCs can provide critical visual and audio records of interactions. When properly deployed, research has shown that a BWC program can reduce civilian complaints, reduce use of force, and improve justice outcomes. Through this solicitation, BJA intends to select one training and technical assistance provider for BWC PIP to support law enforcement agencies that are planning, expanding, and enhancing their BWC programs. The selected TTA provider will prioritize support to law enforcement agencies that have received funding through BJA’s Body-Worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program to Support Law Enforcement Agencies. When funding is available, the awardee must also provide TTA to nongrantees that request assistance within the scope of the BWC program.

The Foundation for Improvement of Justice encourages improvement by recognizing and rewarding accomplishment in the following categories: Legal Reform, Crime Prevention, Child Protection, Speeding the Process, Crime Victims' Rights, Alternative Sentencing, Reducing Recidivism, Lowering the Cost, Effecting Restitution, and other significant efforts.

Through this solicitation, NIJ will provide small planning grants to develop proposals for new and innovative criminal justice research projects involving federally recognized tribes (or tribally based organizations) and which represent a new tribal-researcher investigator partnership. The following research topics are of particular interest to the U.S. Department of Justice: (1) The impact of concurrent criminal jurisdiction on the administration of justice in Indian country and Alaska; (2) The effectiveness of the criminal justice response to the use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs [e.g., methamphetamine, heroin and other opioids including fentanyl, diverted pharmaceuticals, synthetic drugs, and analogues); (3) Crime prevention and intervention efforts; (4) Criminal offending; (5) Enhancing investigations and prosecutions; (6) Provision, role, and impact of forensic science services (including medico legal death investigation); (7) Murdered, missing, and trafficked women and girls; (8) Violent crime reduction; (9) Responding to and reducing victimization; (10) Strengthening tribal justice systems (e.g., evaluating tribal healing to wellness courts tribal-state collaborations, wellness court collaborations, technology-based court systems to improve court operations and outcomes, tribal-reentry programs); (11) Developing and testing tools and technologies to improve criminal justice policy and practice (e.g., unmanned aircraft systems, body-worn cameras, drug-detecting technology, location-based technology, digital devices or applications, victim technology-based services)

NIJ is seeking applications for the funding to maintain and enhance the National Juvenile Justice Data Analysis Program to ensure that vital statistical information is available to the field regarding juvenile risk behaviors, juvenile victimization and offending, and the juvenile justice system’s response to law-violating behavior. These important data inform juvenile justice policy and practice at the federal, state, and local levels. This solicitation will support efforts in assembling juvenile justice-related data sets, analyzing and reporting on complex data and issues, and developing publications and online resources to make juvenile justice data easily accessible to the general public. The successful applicant will also work closely with NIJ and OJJDP to further develop and implement innovative dissemination strategies and tools that facilitate the use of juvenile justice data. This solicitation supports the U.S. Department of Justice’s priority of promoting public safety and reducing crime by producing and disseminating vital statistical information on a range of topics related to juvenile crime, victimization, and justice involvement.

The National Public Safety Partnership (PSP or "the Partnership"), administered by BJA, is designed to enhance the capacity of state, tribal, and local law enforcement and prosecutors in jurisdictions experiencing a precipitous increase in violent crime to enhance public safety by introducing a new framework of federal/local collaboration. For participating sites, it is a three-year engagement that provides expedited delivery of DOJ resources and coordinated training and technical assistance (TTA) in seven core areas: illegal gun violence, federal partnerships, crime analysis, technology, criminal justice collaboration, investigations, and community engagement.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is seeking applications under its Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) Program, which provides awards to accredited universities for doctoral research that uses BJS’s criminal justice data or statistical series and focuses on one of the top Department of Justice (DOJ) priorities: enhancing national security and countering terrorism threats, securing the borders and enhancing immigration enforcement, reducing violent crime and promoting public safety, or prosecuting federal drug crimes and enforcing the rule of law.

This project will support the Embassy Mexico City/INL ROL Criminal Prosecutions Program by providing Mexican law students and professors an opportunity to develop litigation skills for working in and teaching the ACJS. This will be done by delivering litigation workshops, providing training/study tours to the United States and organizing an international conference on law schools' role in the consolidation of the ACJS.

The Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program establishes a comprehensive, coordinated, balanced strategy through enhanced grant programs that would expand prevention and education efforts while also promoting treatment and recovery. Through this solicitation, BJA intends to select five training and technical assistance (TTA) providers to support the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program (COAP). Providers will deliver TTA to tribal, state and local criminal justice and substance abuse treatment agencies nationwide, prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), and their partner agencies in sites selected through the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program solicitation, and to communities nationwide impacted by the opioid epidemic. The TTA providers will work collaboratively within the COAP TTA Network.

The award recipient, working with BJS, will develop a plan for surveying law enforcement agencies deployed by public and private institutions of higher education. SCLEA was last administered in 2011. The recipient of funds will be asked to verify and update the sampling frame, design a sampling strategy, convene an expert panel meeting to review the survey instrument and survey contact strategies if the applicant and BJS determine such a meeting is necessary, and submit the sampling plan and survey to BJS. After approval, the team will field the survey, collect the data, deliver the data to BJS, and work with BJS to analyze and report the data.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is seeking applications for the testing and fielding of a data collection program that surveys public defenders. This study will continue BJS’s efforts to collect data on indigent defense in the United States. It will extend the efforts of the Census of Public Defender Offices (CPDO) and National Survey of Indigent Defense Systems (NSIDS) to enhance our understanding of the work done by attorneys who represent indigent clients. While the CPDO and NSIDS were conducted at the agency level, the proposed collection will survey public defenders who provide services to adults and juveniles charged with criminal offenses. The design for this work was previously awarded in the Survey of Public Defenders: A Design Study (SPDDS). The SPDDS was renamed the Design of the Survey of Publicly Appointed Defense Attorneys (DSPADA); however, this first solicitation will be limited to public defenders. Applicants are strongly encouraged to review a summary of the final report from this earlier development work, available in an appendix to the solicitation. Please note that the project recommendations include the use of incentives. BJS is not proceeding with a test of incentives with this solicitation.

The BJS Statistical Support Program (BJS-SSP is designed to provide scientific and technical support for statistical and methodological research, statistical analyses, documentation, and dissemination services in support of BJS's Criminal Justice Statistics Program (CJSP). Through the CJSP, BJS collects and publishes statistics about crime and the operations of the criminal justice system. The CJSP encompasses more than 30 separate statistical collections about policing, prosecution, the courts, institutional corrections, and community supervision. The BJS-SSP will enhance BJSs efforts by expanding our capacity to analyze CJSP data and document the analysis, thus increasing the breadth of substantive issues that CJSP addresses in both the short run and longer term.

This award will support efforts in at least three of six target countries (select among: South Africa, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and Armenia) to identify priority substantive anticorruption measures and assist in implementation of reform actions related to them. The substantive measures will be determined in reference to the international and regional standards to which these countries have agreed, and the recommendations of the peer review bodies associated with them. Several anticorruption mechanisms and fora promote action on these standards by facilitating peer recommendations or encouraging country commitments. The project should then support the development of action plans and targeted follow-up action (i.e. technical assistance, advocacy, and coordination) to help governments implement the action plans.

Through this solicitation, BJS is seeking a national technical assistance service provider to support the goals and objectives of its National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) and NICS Act Record Improvement Program (NARIP). Direct technical assistance is provided to states, territories, and tribal jurisdictions to ensure that records systems are developed and managed to conform to FBI standards, ensure jurisdictions are using the most appropriate technologies, and adhere to the highest standards of practice with respect to privacy and confidentiality. An additional component of this program includes the routine collection and evaluation of performance measures to ensure that progress is being made in improving state and national records holdings and information sharing and exchanges. The NCHIP TA program has been supported by BJS since 1995.

Many first responders and victim service providers are affected by vicarious trauma, defined as the exposure to the traumatic experiences of other people, because of their repeated exposure to crime victimization. The purpose of this solicitation is to build upon existing evidence-based resources and expertise (at the national, regional, tribal, state, and local levels), weave these resources together with in-depth and tailored technical assistance, based on the unique needs and resources in a particular community, and provide free and accessible support and technical assistance that results in a robust established and sustained response to vicarious trauma. OVC will conduct a pre-application webinar on April 19, 2019, from 1:00-2:00 p.m. e.t. Register at www.ovc.gov/grants/webinars.html. Apply by June 4, 2019.

This program focuses on high crime communities with concentrated distress and hot spots of crime and directly supports the Department's priorities to reduce violent crime (sometimes associated with gang activity), assist communities struggling with drug abuse, and support law enforcement officers by integrating officers and enforcement strategies into community-based crime reduction efforts.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks applications for the W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship for Research on Race, Gender, Culture, and Crime FY 2015. The Fellowship program seeks to advance knowledge regarding the confluence of crime, justice, and culture in various societal contexts. The Fellowship places particular emphasis on crime, violence, and the administration of criminal justice in diverse cultural contexts within the United States.

The Second Chance Act (Pub. L. 110-199) seeks a comprehensive response to the increasing number of incarcerated adults and juveniles who are released from prison, jail, and juvenile residential facilities and return to their communities. There are currently over 2.2 million individuals serving time in our federal and state prisons, and millions of people cycling through local jails every year. Ninety-five percent of those incarcerated today will eventually be released and will return to communities. The coordination of reentry services for members of Native American tribes is even more complex given that they can return from federal, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), state, local, and tribal facilities. The Second Chance Act Programs are designed to help communities develop and implement comprehensive and collaborative strategies that address the challenges posed by reentry and recidivism reduction. Developing a reentry approach for reducing recidivism is extremely challenging for even the most sophisticated correctional agency, requiring access to data and service delivery and coordination from multiple systems, including housing, health, employment, education, etc. This solicitation will provide funding for 12-month strategic planning grants during which time state-level participants will convene and work to 1) identify the drivers of recidivism in the state, 2) identify a target population and recidivism reduction goals for the state, 3) review the alignment of existing corrections programs and practices with evidenced-based practices, and 4) develop a plan to meet recidivism reduction goals using evidenced-based practices. Upon the completion of the Statewide Recidivism Reduction Strategic Plan, states will be invited by BJA to submit applications for implementation grants of up to $1 million with the potential for two supplemental awards of $1 million each. The total possible available in implementation funding per state is $3 million. Future funding decisions fo

DRL/GP aims to improve the justice system and access to justice through innovative programs that strengthen key sectors within the police, military and/or local government. Strong proposals will include a regional pilot of a program that could be replicated nationally. Proposed programs should take a broader view towards long-term stability and proficiency of the justice system in the DRC.