FY 16 Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program (BCJI) - (Category 2)

The Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) Program is a part of the Administration's larger place-based and neighborhood revitalization efforts, such as the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI) and Promise Zones, which support local and tribal communities in developing place-based strategies to change neighborhoods of distress into neighborhoods of opportunity. Recognizing that interconnected solutions are needed in order to resolve the interconnected problems existing in distressed communities, BCJI is designed to provide neighborhoods with coordinated federal support in the implementation of comprehensive place-based strategies to effectively reduce and prevent crime by connecting this support to broader comprehensive neighborhood revitalization efforts. This coordinated federal support includes integrated training and technical assistance resources for federal grantees involved in planning or implementing a neighborhood revitalization project; the coordination and alignment of performance metrics and reporting requirements across agencies; and providing priority consideration during the application review process to applicants who aim to combine or leverage their funds with other federal, state, local, and private sector resources.

The goal of BCJI is to reduce crime and improve community safety as part of a comprehensive strategy to advance neighborhood revitalization. Through a broad cross-sector partnership team, including neighborhood residents, BCJI grantees target neighborhoods with hot spots of violent and serious crime and employ data-driven, cross-sector strategies to reduce crime and violence.

The grant recipient will complete a new strategic, collaborative, and community-oriented plan to reduce crime in a target neighborhood and then begin implementation of the plan during the project period. Applicants will use Planning and Implementation funds to engage in a required 9 to 12 month planning phase to: identify, verify, and prioritize crime hot spots within the identified neighborhood; work with cross-sector management team and law enforcement partners to develop a strategy, drawing on a continuum of approaches to address crime drivers; complete an early action project; pursue community partnerships and leadership that ensures the community is active in the process; build strong community engagement strategies and innovative approaches to collecting resident input and context during the planning phase; 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 implementation plan to reduce crime that includes the analysis, methodology findings, and a plan that articulates the range of strategies that the BCJI cross sector partners plan to pursue.

Upon completion of the planning phase, the grant recipient will engage in an implementation phase to: convene regular, ongoing meetings with cross-sector partners and management team; share regular input/discussions with research partner and assess program implementation; modify strategies, as appropriate; identify and develop a sustainability strategy for longer term implementation of BCJI program core principles; and build capacity of cross-sector management team to continue to coordinate research.

CA/NCF