Equipment and Jail Management Project

This grant program is authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5) (the 'Recovery Act') and by 42 U.S.C. 3751(a). The stated purposes of the Recovery Act are: to preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery; to assist those most impacted by the recession; to provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health; to invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits; and to stabilize state and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases. The Recovery Act places great emphasis on accountability and transparency in the use of taxpayer dollars. Among other things, it creates a new Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board and a new website ' Recovery.gov ' to provide information to the public, including access to detailed information on grants and contracts made with Recovery Act funds.

The Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program funded under the Recovery Act is the primary provider of federal criminal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions. Recovery JAG funds support all components of the criminal justice system, from multi-jurisdictional drug and gang task forces to crime prevention and domestic violence programs, courts, corrections, treatment, and justice information sharing initiatives. Recovery JAG funded projects may address crime through the provision of services directly to individuals and/or communities and by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of criminal justice systems, processes, and procedures.

Berrien County and Benton Harbor agreed that the County will serve as fiscal agent, and the City will receive $93,813 of the total allocation. Benton Harbor plans to use its allocation to purchase three fully equipped police cruisers. Currently, the police department has 11 patrol vehicles in service, but 8 of the vehicles are 4 years old with 70,000'100,000 miles on each car. The department anticipates that the vehicle purchases will reduce maintenance expenditures by 80 percent, and these funds will be redirected to hire additional office staff. Berrien County plans to purchase a jail management system, which will allow the county to track jail inmates from the time they are booked until they are released. The system will dramatically reduce the number of staff hours needed to gather pertinent data for the offices of the sheriff, the prosecutor, the courts, and probation, and it will improve the county's response to state and federal data requests.

NCA/NCF