Grant Details

This program provides funding for tribal, state, and local justice agencies to develop, implement, and test innovative and research-based responses to high-cost drivers of crime and other public safety and community challenges, as identified through data analysis. Challenges may include chronic crime problems, emerging crime problems, or barriers to justice agencies' ability to address such problems, including those related to law enforcement, prosecution, sentencing, jail and prison, probation and parole. For example, high-cost drivers may include: opioid and substance abuse; high system utilization by populations with significant mental health issues; repeat violent offenders; or lack of information sharing or technology integration within the criminal justice system. Examples such as these make it very difficult and costly for communities to ensure the security of their residents. By collaboratively identifying the root causes and implications of, and solutions to, these problems, criminal justice agencies can better prioritize resources and improve the management of offenders returning to or residing in communities who are most likely to commit new or violent offenses.

Through this solicitation, BJA seeks applicants in two categories. Both have specific objectives and deliverables described under their respective category headings:

• Category 1: Improving the Efficacy of State, Local, and Tribal Justice Systems - BJA seeks applicants to address persistent or emerging crime and public safety problems, or to remove impediments to directly addressing them. BJA will make awards for sites to pursue the following objectives:
  • Collect and analyze data, and identify and respond to crime and cost drivers, including crime and costs associated with investigating, prosecuting, and detaining individuals who have committed crimes and are in the U.S. without legal immigration status. For example, by reducing gang violence and time to deportation.
  • Engage stakeholders across the justice system (e.g., law enforcement, jails, treatment providers) to diagnose and develop coordinated responses. For example, improve data collection and training about types of victimization, trauma, and related needs in order to develop policies and procedures to maximize benefits (e.g., accessing federal resources to aid victims of violent crime, use of databases to track restitution orders and collection, increasing the amount inmates pay toward victim restitution), and to reduce the collateral effects of violence.
  • Test, establish, and/or expand innovative ideas and evidence-based strategies to prevent and respond to crime. For example, assess the correctional population to ensure appropriate bed space usage and, if needed, seek strategies to correct the inmate mix to prioritize bed space for serious, chronic, violent offenders. Focus state probation and parole agency resources on identifying offenders' risks for general and violent recidivism, and related substance use and mental health needs, and mitigating their risk for engaging in violent behavior or being the victims of violent crime.
  • Foster effective and consistent collaboration with justice system agencies to improve strategic and tactical system operations. For example, implement and test approaches to consistently gather and validate intelligence collected in jails and prisons (e.g., about security threat groups); and develop and implement plans to respond to intelligence behind and outside the walls.
  • Use data, technology, and intelligence to focus resources on the problems, people, and places associated with concentrations of crime and cost drivers. For example, review existing violent crime and opiate reduction strategies to determine whether they are having the intended effects, and improve performance if they are not. Develop analytic capacity to inform more targeted and effective strategies to address specific crime problems.
• Category 2: Innovations in Information Sharing to Coordinate Crime Reduction - BJA seeks applicants to develop and test innovative and responsible tools to facilitate information sharing and coordinate community corrections, law enforcement, prosecutors and other system stakeholders to improve identification of, and coordinated responses to, violent crime that could later be applied to the justice reinvestment process. BJA will make awards to pursue the following objectives:
  • Break down information sharing silos and challenge current practices that may impede a community's violent crime reduction strategies.
  • Develop comprehensive and integrated data-sharing and notification systems about violent offenders moving into, between, or being released into communities. 
    • Include data from multiple sources, as appropriate given the stated problem (e.g., law enforcement, corrections, probation, parole, sheriff's departments, and courts).
    • Make data sharing between key agencies—such as corrections, probation and parole, and law enforcement—automated where appropriate, to facilitate better public safety partnerships.
    • Develop or improve offender-specific information-sharing protocols to ensure that agencies are aware of high-risk individuals and receive relevant intelligence so they are managed appropriately through detention, reentry, and supervision.
    • Design a model of cooperation between all user agencies to implement notification and information sharing systems.
    • Develop training protocols and procedures for staff use of the data-sharing system to ensure optimal implementation of the system's capabilities.
  • Build data-analysis capacity and improve justice system partners' abilities to produce a cross-system analysis that provides a better understanding of the contributions of pretrial, probation, parole, reentry, and other services to crime trends.
    • Implement and test approaches to consistently gather and validate intelligence collected in jails and prisons (e.g., about security threat groups). Develop and implement plans to respond to intelligence.
    • Gather or link multiple data systems to improve implementation of risk and other assessments (e.g., risk of general and/or violent recidivism, substance use and mental health needs); identify individuals at high risk of committing, or being victimized by, violent crime.

Applicants may receive priority consideration in the review process by explaining how the problem area identified in the application could be addressed through cooperation with federal immigration authorities, including compliance with 8 USC §§ 1373, 1644, and 1324, participation in a 287 (g) or other cooperation program, honoring requests for notice of release, transfers of custody, and/or short term extensions of custody, and providing access to detention centers so federal immigration authorities may conduct interviews. If an applicant chooses to seek this priority consideration, please explain specifically how these forms of cooperation will address the problem area identified, and how grants funds will achieve this end.