OARS funding Criminal Justice

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC) is soliciting proposals from organizations, groups, or individuals to enter into a cooperative agreement for a 24-month period to begin no later than September 15, 2013. Work under this cooperative agreement will involve the evaluation of the Employment Retention Inventory (ERI), which supports the case management efforts of workforce development practitioners. Specifically, the goal of this project is to determine whether the ERI effectively identifies the precursors, obstacles, and personality traits that influence an offender's separation from the workforce. In addition, this project will explore the relationship between offender employment retention and recidivism. The major deliverables of this project include (1) the use of a system to capture and evaluate data and (2) a written report that summarizes project findings, recommendations, and potential next steps. This project will be a collaborative venture with the NIC Community Services Division.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) seeks to enhance the ability of the juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health, and education systems to share information that will facilitate the provision of services and ensure better outcomes for children, youth, and families. OJJDP will deliver training and technical assistance (TTA) services to build state, local, and tribal capacities to implement solutions to address this nationwide need. Through this program, OJJDP will build the capacity of juvenile justice, child welfare, mental health, and education systems and use existing information sharing standards, procedures, tools, and practices across agencies to improve services and outcomes for youth, families, and communities.

Demonstration projects funded through this solicitation will support comprehensive approaches within state, tribal, and local adult and juvenile correctional facilities to prevent, detect, and respond to incidences of sexual victimization.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) seeks to establish a cooperative agreement with a collection agent to field the 2014 Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories (CPFFCL14). The key activities covered under this award include updating the national census roster of publicly funded crime labs, developing the data collection instrument (i.e., questionnaire), collecting and verifying the data submitted by labs, and delivering to BJS a final data file.

The proposed project will identify and retain the support of substantive and methodological experts as affiliates to assist in project tasks. The two priority areas are 1) demonstrating how the federal data, especially the linked data, can be used to address pressing substantive questions; and 2) assessing the primary shortcomings of the FJSP data for federal criminal justice statistical reporting purposes, and proposing and implementing methodological solutions to address these issues.

Based on information shared with OARS by an NSF official, forensics research and education is a current area of emphasis for the NSF.

Programs funded under the Second Chance Act help ensure that the transition individuals make from prison and jail to the community is successful and promotes public safety. Section 101 of the Second Chance Act authorizes federal awards to state and local governments and federally recognized Indian tribes that may be used for demonstration projects to promote the safe and successful reintegration into the community of individuals who have been incarcerated or detained.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) seeks an agent to execute the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Instrument Redesign and Testing Project. The project is designed to provide scientific and technical support for the redesign and testing of the NCVS roster control card, crime screener (NCVS-1), and crime incident (NCVS-2) instruments in support of BJS's efforts related to increasing the efficiency, reliability, and use of the NCVS. In addition, the project will evaluate the use and content of the NCVS supplements. Through this project, BJS seeks to evaluate and modernize the organization and content of the NCVS instruments; improve the efficiency of the instruments and the current core-supplement design; develop a procedure for introducing routine improvements to the NCVS in order to capture emerging crime types and time-relevant topics; develop a systematic process for testing item reliability, validity, and burden; conduct cognitive tests of current and proposed items on the survey instruments; and pre-test the modified NCVS. BJS intends to fund the project through a cooperative agreement for a 3 year period.

In response to concerns voiced by victim service providers, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) recognizes a need to assist the field in becoming more educated consumers of-and contributors to-research and evaluation that can lead to more effective and cost-efficient services for victims of crime. There is also a need to assist the research community in disseminating findings in ways that are accessible, understandable, and useful for the victim services field. OVC will award a cooperative agreement for a comprehensive assessment of victim service providers to ascertain their level of awareness and knowledge about the benefits of social science research and program evaluation for their work with victims of crime, paired with an assessment of researchers' interest in, and capacity for, translating their work for a practitioner audience.

As part of a collaborative effort with and funding from the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) seeks applications for funding basic scientific research in the development and validation of a risk assessment tool with both static and dynamic factors designed for use in criminal and juvenile justice systems to estimate the short-term risk that juveniles with a history of sex offenses may recommit sex offenses.

This FY 2013 competitive grant announcement focuses on provision of training and technical assistance (TTA) to state and local law enforcement and crime prevention efforts targeting emerging crime. Successful applicants will develop and deliver TTA in three categories to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system. The categories are: Educating the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer; Increasing Analytical Capacity: Training for the Law Enforcement Executive; and Delivery of Evidenced-Based Violence Reduction Strategies.

The study of adult offender decision-making has typically been approached from the rational choice model. With this solicitation NIJ seeks to expand the existing research by examining the process of adult offender decision-making with respect to the decision to offend. NIJ requests proposals that either expand the rational choice model or use other theories (e.g., behavioral economics, business models, psychology, or cognitive models) or both. Proposed research also should consider issues such as social context, emotions, default choices, or possibly environmental context to help the field gain a better understanding of the overall decision-making process.

NIJ is seeking applications for research that explores the relationship between theory (of any discipline) and geospatial predictive policing strategies. In particular, NIJ is seeking proposals that focus on linking theories to current policing strategies, discerning potential disconnects in the levels of analysis between theory and practice, explicating what effects this may have on findings, and, finally, addressing means of adapting theory and practice based on the results.