Urban League of Essex County FY 14 Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program: Planning

The Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) Program is a part of the Obama Administration's larger Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI) that helps local and tribal communities develop place-based, community-oriented strategies with coordinated federal support to change neighborhoods of distress into neighborhoods of opportunity. The BCJI program will focus on funding efforts in two major categories. "Planning" and "Planning and Implementation". Under both categories, with a broad cross-sector partnership team, BCJI grant recipients will target neighborhoods with chronic hot spots of violent and serious crime and employ data-driven, cross-sector strategies (enforcement, prevention, and intervention) to reduce crime and violence. The cross-sector partnership team will include law enforcement, neighborhood residents, a local research partner, and relevant community stakeholders.

The grant recipient will receive a planning grant to design a strategic, collaborative, and community-oriented plan to reduce crime in a target neighborhood. Grant funds will be used to: identify, verify, and prioritize crime hot spots within the identified neighborhood; work with cross-sector partners/management team to develop a strategy, drawing on a continuum of approaches to address crime drivers; pursue community partnerships and leadership, building support to ensure the community is active in the process; collaborate regularly with local law enforcement, a research partner, and the community to conduct analysis of crime drivers and an assessment of needs and available resources; and develop a comprehensive strategic plan to reduce crime in the identified neighborhood.

The grant recipient will oversee the planning process to include the above activities in addition to planning efforts to obtain and leverage other resources and funding to implement the strategic plan. Funds awarded under this grant are for planning purposes only and may not be used for implementation. The grant recipient will receive intensive technical assistance from BJA's selected technical assistance provider to support their planning efforts and will be required to complete and participate in any needs assessment processes, development of logic models, and/or planning tools, provided by the BJA TTA provider.

CA/NCF