FY 2009 Justice Assistance Grant Program

The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program (JAG) allows states and units of local governments, including tribes, to support a broad range of activities to prevent and control crime based on their own state and local needs and conditions. Grant funds can be used for state and local initiatives, technical assistance, training, personnel, equipment, supplies, contractual support, and information systems for criminal justice, including for any one or more of the following purpose areas: 1) law enforcement programs; 2) prosecution and court programs; 3) prevention and education programs; 4) corrections and community corrections programs; 5) drug treatment and enforcement programs; 6) planning, evaluation, and technology improvement programs; and 7) crime victim and witness programs (other than compensation).

The disparate jurisdictions consisting of Clark County and the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas will use their Fiscal Year 2009 JAG award in the amount of $1,822,534 to support personnel, equipment purchases, and multi-agency information technology programs across the county. The city of Las Vegas, acting as the fiscal agent, will use its portion to hire a Court Compliance Officer, restore a full-time bilingual victim witness advocate to provide timely and accurate criminal justice information and assistance to victims of crimes, and support a Neighborhood Services Inmate Discharge Planning Initiative. This initiative will assist with employment placement and employment retention of 80 formally incarcerated or court involved individuals on an annual basis. Clark County will use its portion of the grant within the Clark County District Attorney's Office, Eighth Judicial District Court, and Department of Family Services. Specifically, the county will fund two gang attorneys, a Specialty Court Specialist to improve retention and graduation rates of Adult Drug Court participants, and hire a program and office assistant to offer new, more intensive services to families in the child welfare system using the Triple P Positive Parenting Program. This program will also offer a parent support hotline to encourage the maintenance of newly learned parenting skills and explore the feasibility of implementing an online registration process for parents and caregivers in the community. The cities of Henderson and North Las Vegas have agreed to use their shares for the Clark County Shared Computer Operations for Protection and Enforcement and Wanted Vehicles System (SCOPE/WVS) project. This project is administered by the Clark County Department of Information Technologies (IT) and is the primary database used by the regional law enforcement agencies, including the Henderson and North Las Vegas Police Departments. Through a competitive process, Clark County IT will implement Phase 1A of the SCOPE/WVS project, which includes installing and configuring the development system's hardware and base software and to perform system testing to verify that the base system functions.

NCA/NCF