NCJA FY 2022 Implementing Safer Communities Training and Technical Assistance

Data collection and program evaluation are foundational for achieving long-lasting crisis intervention program improvement and gun violence reduction and prevention. Unfortunately, many state, local and tribal agencies struggle with data availability, accessibility, and data quality and need direct support to identify data gaps and needs to inform program and policy solutions. Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (Byrne SCIP) and Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) program SAAs, and their subrecipients need TTA to ensure the successful creation, implementation, or enhancement of these strategies and the collection of data elements for the statutorily required reporting. NCJA will leverage its existing TTA program infrastructure to immediately support Byrne SCIP and Byrne JAG grantees to gather the necessary information to meet the reporting requirements in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022.

 NCJA will leverage the expertise of its staff, partners, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), including the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, to support SAAs with the goals of, 1.  enhancing data collection and reporting efforts and 2. preparing for participation in a larger evaluation initiative.

NCJA will achieve the following six key objectives: 1. Develop and administer individual state assessment tools to ascertain existing crisis intervention programs, gaps, and needs. 2. Create, implement, and monitor individual state work plans that are responsive to the unique needs of each site, and develop a communications strategy to ensure all grantees are aware of available TTA including resources from BJA. 3. Create and maintain partnerships with BJA-approved SMEs in Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) implementation, crisis response and gun violence reduction programs, and evaluation, to provide agile TTA to Byrne SCIP and Byrne JAG grantees. 4. Provide onsite and virtual TTA through peer-to-peer engagement, trainings, and webinars to guide states’ exploration, implementation, or enhancement of appropriate strategies and highlight promising practices. 5. Evaluate, monitor, and provide direct TTA based on the assessment of a grantee’s capacity to provide quality data related to key strategies and outcomes, and document baseline data for evaluation to ensure successful participation in a larger program evaluation process. 6. Create an online dashboard for states and BJA to examine grant activity, which will include the results from the BJA Performance Measures Questionnaire, and measures taken by grantees to safeguard the constitutional rights of individuals subject to firearm relinquishment to support the development of an annual report that summarizes key data collected from Byrne SCIP and Byrne JAG grantees.