FY 2023 Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Convictions Program

Transcript also available as PDF.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Good afternoon and welcome. This is the BJA's webinar on the solicitation which is out, the “FY 2023 Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Convictions” solicitation webinar. My name is Marissa Bluestine. I'm the Assistant Director at the Quattrone Center. We are a TTA provider for grantees under this grant, which we'll talk about later.

We have close captioning available for this event. To turn it on or off, please use the icon found on the bottom on the ribbon at the bottom of your Zoom window. Please feel free to use the chat function feature down on the ribbon at the bottom of the window or to raise your hand. But to submit a question, because there are so many people on this webinar today, please use the Q&A feature that is found on the ribbon at the bottom of the window. We will try to address questions as they come up, but we have plenty of time for Q&A reserved at the end of our presentation.

We are recording this webinar. It will be posted on the BJA website and also forwarded to all registrants when it is available. I will be posting a PDF of the slides in the chat in a few minutes and reposting as well, so you will have that information today.

So, that's it for me, for our introductory pieces. I want to introduce Katharine Browning who is with us from BJA. She is the Grant Administrator for this grant. So, she's the one who works with the grantees and with us as well at the Quattrone Center. And she has a presentation on the application process itself. What are the grant deliverables? What are they looking for in grant applications? We'll talk about again about what kind of TTA is available for grantees under this grant and then we'll have plenty of time for questions. So, Kathy?

KATHARINE BROWNING: All right. Thank you, Marissa. First, I'm just going to make sure my audio is working here. Yeah. Good. All right. Thank you, Marissa. And welcome, everybody. As Marissa said, my name is Kathy Browning. I'm a Senior Policy Advisor at BJA, working on the Wrongful Conviction portfolio. So, here's a little bit of our agenda. I'm going to go over a little bit about BJA and the Wrongful Conviction Program. Talk about the categories of funding that we have in this year's solicitation. Talk a little bit about the application materials. And then, as Marissa said, we will have plenty of time for Q&A. All right.

Just in case—for those of you all who may not be familiar with BJA or OJP—we just put in a little bit of an overview of this agency. So, the Office of Justice Programs is the agency that provides grant funding and training, research, and statistics to the criminal justice community. And BJA is a component within the Office of Justice Programs. BJA's mission is to provide leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to support state, local, and tribal justice strategies to achieve safer communities. Our Director is currently Karhlton Moore, and he was appointed by President Biden in February of 2022, and he oversees the entire office. I am in the Policy Office. I'm not going to read all of this out. You'll have it in the slides, but I'm in the Policy Office and work closely with the Programs Office, they're the ones who manage the grants that we make. And then we also have our Operations Office and the Public Safety Officer Benefits Office.

So, there are five major strategic focus areas in BJA: to improve public safety through measures which build trust within the community; the reduction of recidivism and prevention of unnecessary confinement—that's important—integration of evidence-based, research-driven strategies into the day-to-day operations of BJA; increasing program effectiveness with a renewed emphasis on data analysis, information sharing, and performance management; and ensuring organizational excellence through outstanding administration and oversight of all of our investments. Just a little bit more overview. I won't get into all of these. We'll just move on because I know what you're mostly interested in is the solicitation.

So, the overview, I'll refer to it as the Wrongful Convictions Program, but the goal and the objectives of this program is to provide support for reviews of cases of post-conviction and appeal claims of innocence, with a focus on those at greatest risk of error, to establish or enhance partnerships—which that's something we're really going to talk about here. This is an important piece of this program: To apply strategic review of individual claims and, where relevant, to use this information to inform efforts to prevent wrongful convictions. To enhance the collection and analysis of data, is an important part of this. And, obviously, wherever possible, identifying and apprehending the actual perpetrators of a crime. And finally, to evaluate whether or not there are any systemic issues that exist that may compromise the rule of law and recommend practices for mitigating them and preventing wrongful convictions.

So, in the FY 23 solicitation, there are two categories. The first one is for Category 1, is for Site-Based funds for Wrongful Conviction Review Entity-Led Strategies. And the second one, Category 2, is for Prosecutor/Conviction Integrity Unit-led Partnerships to implement these strategies. And as you see, for those of you who are familiar with our previous solicitations, Category 2 is a new category here, and so I'm going to be talking a little bit about that—but that is a change from last year. And you'll also note that we have increased the funding levels to $600,000 is the maximum. We had increased them last year some, but we've done it a little bit more by popular request. We get a lot of requests for that. So, again, this is just the maximum amount. If you don't need that full amount, you want to apply for what makes sense for your project, but we have raised that maximum.

And so, because we have that the Category 2 here, looking at the conviction integrity unit entities, the eligibility—the following entities are eligible to apply. So, we've got city, county, state, or tribal governments; nonprofit organizations, including tribal nonprofit organizations; institutions of higher education; and state or local public defenders offices that have in-house post-conviction representation program. Again, all of these are detailed in the solicitation. I should note that I've tried to simplify some of the material for this presentation, but always refer to the solicitation for more specifics.

So, Category 1, as I said, is Wrongful Conviction Review Entity-Led Strategy. So, this is similar to what you've seen in, I think, all of our previous solicitations. So, this is one that's led by a Wrongful Conviction Review entity and focuses on review of post-conviction claims of innocence. This could be a jurisdiction with a new program or an established one. So, we've had a number over the years that have used this grant funding to start a new program. The applicant's strategic plan should review, investigate, and adjudicate individual cases of post-conviction claims of innocence and appeals. We're looking to support high-quality and efficient post-conviction representation for these defendants. And the strategy should also include an assessment of the risk for wrongful conviction among the reviewed cases.

A little bit more on this. So, if the application includes a partnership with a CIU, you're going to need to include a description of the policies and procedures that are designed to avoid conflicts of interest and protect the defendant's rights, including plans for obtaining a waiver of attorney/client privileges and informed consent. And I'm not looking at the chat in Q&A but I'm guessing we may be getting some questions about sort of this partnership and everything, which I will get to but I'm just going to go through some of the basics here.

So, all of the applicant organizations should show your capacity and commitment of the key partners to conduct this work, including experience and competence with legal representation of post-conviction claims of innocence and appeals.

So, for Category 2, this is for the Prosecutor or Conviction Integrity Unit-Led strategies. So, this is one that's led by a CIU and focuses on review of post-conviction claims of innocence. Again, like with the other one, this could be for starting up a new CIU or for building up an established CIU. Applications should include the proposed methods of assessing the risk of and preventing wrongful convictions through the collection and analysis of data on post-conviction claims of innocence and outcomes of appeals where error is found. And the wrongful conviction assessment should look at any vulnerabilities in the court system and create a process to systematically identify and review cases that meet the criteria for risk of wrongful conviction.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And, Kathy, there's just a quick clarification in the Q&A, whether prosecutors' offices are eligible to apply. It's our understanding that they are.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yes. So, the applicant may support a partnership with the wrongful conviction entity that's applying under Category 1. And when there is a partnership, you should have either an MOU or Letters of Support between the CIU and—or the prosecutor's office and the wrongful conviction entities that are a part of this. CIU/prosecutor applicants must include a description of policies and procedures designed to avoid conflicts of interest or perceptions of partiality, particularly with regard to the involvement in reviews of prosecutors who originally tried the case or participated in the prosecution. So, applicants must include descriptions of policies and procedures for handling evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, with a strong preference for referral to an independent entity once discovered.

Now, I do want to elaborate a little bit more on the partnership here. So, you know, one of the questions that we get most often every year when we put the solicitation out is what about CIU, that we have seen over the years where wrongful conviction entities are working with CIUs and vice versa? And so, our hope here is to facilitate those kinds of partnerships and to allow for even more funding than was allowed in the past when you had these partnerships.

So, you know, if you are in a jurisdiction where there's a CIU that wants to partner with one or more wrongful conviction entities, then the CIU could come in under Category 2 and the wrongful conviction is under Category 1. It's not required that you do it that way, and one of the reasons we allowed it to—we wanted to maintain enough flexibility with the knowledge that there are a number of jurisdictions right now that have current grants—current awards—and are working through those. And so, if a CIU wanted to partner with them and they didn't need additional funds, for some reason, then that's okay too. But what we're looking for here is if those partnerships were possible. And so, it's not required that you have the two different, I guess you could call them, companion applications, but that is a way that you can maximize the resources that might be needed for your jurisdiction. And if there are other questions about that partnership, feel free to put those in the Q&A and we can address it in even more detail at the end.

So, in terms of deliverables, not a whole lot here for both of the categories. You'll be expected to identify and report the number of post-conviction and appeals, claims of innocence cases reviewed, the stage of review conducted for each case, and any outcome. Document a systematic review of areas of risk for wrongful conviction and recommend any strategies to mitigate these risks. More specifically, in addition to those two for Category 1, we're looking for the review, investigation, and adjudication of individual cases of claims of innocence and supporting high-quality and effective post-conviction representation and related activities. And for Category 2, development of the policies and procedures and identification of training needs for preventing wrongful conviction.

Just a note about performance measures requirements. You're not required to submit any performance data with your application, but you should pay attention to this section in the solicitation, because it is something that, if you are awarded, you're going to be required to submit performance data as part of the reporting requirements under these awards. And there's a link there so that you can get a sense of what those would be. So, your application—

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Yeah, Kathy, there actually is a question in the Q&A about that exactly. "Do you have information about specific types of data that BJA is looking for with the applications that will be tracked or will that kind of vary on an applicant-by-applicant basis?"

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, I should but I don't. I just can't remember them offhand, but there should be a link in the solicitation that will take you to some more information about what those performance metrics are.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. And we did put the link in the chat to the solicitation, so it's there. We can repost it again for folks who may have joined us a little bit late. And there's another question, Kathy, I think you can answer here, which is whether it is possible to apply under Category 2, in other words, for CIU, where the main grantee is a CIU, the wrongful conviction entity is the subgrantee—where that's that partnership you were talking about with the wrongful conviction entity would have to file their own application.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yeah. You can still submit an application, just as you described, with the wrongful conviction entity as a subgrantee. Again, we're trying to provide, but under that scenario, the cap would be the $600,000. So, for that award, it's yes. Any other questions or shall I...

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Not at the moment.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Okay.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: You're good.

KATHARINE BROWNING: All right. So, just a few tips for applying. Just make sure that the application is submitted by an eligible type of applicant. Please read through the solicitation very closely to make sure that you are responsive to the scope of the solicitation. We've got a lot of details within there about what the peer review will look at and all the different sections. So, please read through that.

Just a note: On page 15, there's a list of items that are designated as critical elements. So, please pay close note of that. Again, as I said earlier, the applicant does not have to apply for the maximum amount of funds, and apply for what makes sense for your award. And if not, if everybody applies for the full amount, then we can fund more. We've got a total amount that we can fund in terms of dollars that we can fund, not a total number of awards per se. So, I just want to make sure that that is clear. So, it hurts your application if it just looks like you're trying to apply for that maximum amount if you don't need it. And I can't emphasize this enough. Check, recheck, and check again all of your budget, grant requirements, references. Make sure that you have everything. There's a checklist in the back to help you. We've tried to streamline it, but I think we have a ways to go before it's [INDISTINCT].

So—important to know—there are actually two deadlines for this, and you have to make both of them. So, the first one is the Grants.gov deadline, which is May 17. And also note, in the past, we've always had our deadline being like midnight. We're not doing that anymore. So please pay attention to that. This is pretty much 9:00 Eastern. So, we get a lot of submissions around 11:00 at night, so please make sure that you take note of that time change. And so, the Grants.gov deadline is just for your SF-424 and some of the basic forms for Grants.gov. The full application is due on May the 24th. Again, it's an 8:59 p.m. Eastern Time. So take note.

So, I encourage you not to wait until 8:00 on those days to be applying. It's not unheard of they have technical difficulties—and while, sometimes, you can file appeals—if circumstances come up, like if you're applying and you have a technical difficulty, I always recommend…I'm going to have something in a couple of slides. I'll have the contact information for the Response Center. If you have any trouble during any of this process, please notify the Response Center or if it's with JustGrants, please notify them, because when we have a record of what's going on, then we're more likely to be able to help you remedy stuff.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And I just want to point out that in the PDF, the slides that folks have, these links are live. So, you can just click on them and go right to the site that Kathy is intending.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Great. Thank you. And so here, BJA has really made an effort over the last few years to develop just some more guidance on what's needed in an application and what is the funding process like and how to put together a proposal. So, we've got some links here to some of our webinars and videos that we have and guidance and resources. So, I encourage you—especially if you're a first time or if you haven't applied in a little while since the process has changed—then please make use of these resources. As I referenced earlier, there are a number of helplines, I guess you call them, for you and please make use of them as you have questions, please contact these. We got them sort of broken out.

So, we got the Grants.gov-related question, there's a hotline, there's an email. So those are posted here. If you have trouble with JustGrants, there's a customer support hotline and contacting email there. If you have any questions that you think of after this webinar or more about the solicitation, then you can submit these to the OJP Response Center. Those questions are sent to me, as a general rule, to respond to and so please put those questions in. They check in with me, if it's not one that's already been answered, in case they do answer that, and we can address those questions there. So, we've got the email there, we've got the number, and the ways to get in touch with them.

There's also a contact for receiving email notifications and new funding opportunities and resources. There are a lot of different ways. I'm a dinosaur, so I don't actually use any of these, but there are a lot of different ways to keep in touch with BJA and get information about our awards and what we're doing, and those are all here. So, at this point, I think I'm going to turn it over to Marissa to talk to you a little bit about the training and technical assistance.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Great. Thanks, Kathy. And there's some questions in the Q&A. We're going to get to Q&A in just a moment, so we'll be able to answer those questions live.

So, the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the training and technical assistance provider for all grantees under the upholding rule of law in preventing wrongful convictions program so far. So, what we do as TTA providers is we consult directly with all grantees to kind of see what their needs are under the grant in order to make their goals happen. We can provide access to subject matter experts.

Our staff and our folks at the Center are well-versed in issues related to wrongful conviction, litigation, and investigation, so we can directly consult or connect you with others. We also provide peer group support through regional groups with grantees, with statewide groups with CIUs, all kinds of different combinations. Every once [INAUDIBLE] the Quattrone Center hosts a monthly training program for grantees, as well as, frankly, anyone who's doing post-conviction litigation and investigation. Those topics cover a wide range, from internal issues such as dealing with intake, handling issues with racial discrimination in terms of intake and case review, false confessions, eyewitness identification issues, all kinds—we've covered it. I will put a link to a website in the chat where all of those videos are available and posted. They're also on our YouTube page.

So, we do everything we can to meet with grantees. You're not required to work with the TTA, but we are here. And we are here to provide support for grantees as you're going through the process, in particular, where there are partnerships between a CIU and an innocence organization or wrongful conviction entity. We can provide a lot of support to kind of help work through those issues that arise when trying to work in partnership. So, we would encourage anybody to reach out to us. I'll put my email in the chat as well before we end. Please feel free to reach out to any questions about what kind of assistance might be available for grantees and how we can help you meet your goals. That's literally what we're here for.

KATHARINE BROWNING: All right. Thank you, Marissa. So, I think at this time we are ready to move into the Q&A. So, I am going to stop sharing my screen.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay.

KATHARINE BROWNING: So...

MARISSA BLUESTINE: So, the first two questions are really kind of the same. It's for CIUs. The way that the solicitation is worded, it says CIU in partnership with a wrongful conviction entity, but they just want to make sure that CIUs can apply for their own projects even without a wrongful conviction entity partner.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yes. So, yes, you can apply on your own. We're encouraging partnerships and, again we're trying to leave a lot of flexibility there. And so, yes, you can apply without there being a companion partnership application.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And there's a second related question with that, Kathy, which is that if there is a partnership with a wrongful conviction entity, does that entity go in as a subgrantee under the CIU's grant or do they have to apply on their own or is either one acceptable?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Either one is acceptable is the short answer.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay.

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, yeah. Again, because they may not need all of the funds from a separate, award, and we understand it's a lot of work and a lot—and that it might not work for your arrangement. So, yes, you can either do it as a subaward and vice versa, as we've had in the past with the wrong conviction entities being the applicant and they have a partnership with the CIU as part of that.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Right. And a different question on this, but under other grant programs like the post-conviction DNA or Coverdell, it requires the attorney general's office to sign off. Is that required here for the CIUs or wrongful conviction entities under this grant? Does the attorney general's office have to sign off on the grant?

KATHARINE BROWNING: No. Not for this one.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: So, no involvement at all necessary?

KATHARINE BROWNING: No.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And then there's a question there about the reverse of the partnerships. "Can the wrongful conviction entity be the main grantee and the CIU be the subgrantee?"

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yes.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And that's how it's been done on many of the grants that are already out there. So, we have—

KATHARINE BROWNING: Correct.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: That's right: That that's been done.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Again, the goal here and the reason for having the two different categories here and allowing for that is largely to allow for greater funding levels if that's what's needed there and to allow some flexibility, so—

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. So, there's a question I think about clinics at law schools. "If there's a law school considering founding a clinic—they haven't done so yet—can this funding be used to support a clinic, particularly one that looks like a hybrid potentially with maybe an engineering program or a software program aimed, I'm assuming, at looking for preventing wrongful convictions and efficient ways of going through cases?” So, it would be a partnership between a budding clinic, let's say, and another entity at the university? Would that be something which would be appropriate under this grant?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yeah. I think, yes. As a general rule, yes. You would need to just go to a [INDISTINCT] clearly and make sure that you're within—you're adhering to the scope of the solicitation or the reviewing cases or finding new, more efficient means. But, yes, that could be, I will say.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. And I don't see any other questions in the Q&A section, so I would just remind people, if you do have outstanding questions that have not yet been answered, please put them in the Q&A so we can get them answered for you. I am, again, putting in the PDF of the slides from this presentation. So, obviously, you weren't able to link on the slides during the Zoom, but the links are live on the PDF, and you should be able to link all the resources that Kathy was talking about in the PDF that's there. I'm also going to put in my email address here.

If anybody has questions about the TTA that we do or the work that we do with wrongful conviction entities and CIUs around the country, you want to be added to that monthly meeting and that monthly training program, please let me know. We'll be happy to add anybody who wants to be on there. And I'm also printing up a website where we—just make sure I'm spelling out right. Where all of the—nope, I did not. Where all the previous webinars that we've done, all the recordings are there. And I should say that, of course, all of those are funded by BJA and they're available through that because of the funding that we've received from the program to be able to help.

So, again, looking at the Q&A, not seeing any additional questions and no hands raised. We'll give folks a minute or two else to put any questions and answers. We will be making this recording available through the BJA website. It will have to be processed through BJA so it'll take a little bit of a time, but it'll be posted probably near the solicitation for the program itself, which I posted in the chat and I can repost again. And we will also send it out to all the registrants that we received through the registration link as well. And I'm just putting in a copy of the solicitation once more into the chat here, or, at least, a link to the solicitation there for anybody who still needs it.

Okay. I'm not seeing any further—oh, there’s one. There is a question in the chat about 501(c)(3) nonprofits applying that do work in post-conviction. So, as I understand it, Kathy, nonprofits are included in the wrongful conviction entity definition as long as they're doing work in this space. Is that right?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yes. Yes. And you can see I just sort of summarized the eligible applicants in the slide here, but we've got it spelled out in a lot more detail in this location—but, yes.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. Great. And the question is whether they're considered a grantee or a subgrantee. Could you just explain a bit, Kathy, about the difference between a grantee and a subgrantee?

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, the grantee is the applicant. So, now the applicant is the one who is also the fiscal agent—so, the one who will be handling all of the grant activities and overseeing the award. There are a lot of different ways that you can have different partnerships in here. But for the subgrantee it is when maybe there's a partnering agency that needs some funds to do their part of the project, then they can be listed as a subgrantee on the award.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And there's a question of when will the awards be announced. And I know there's not a date. We wouldn't hold you to that, Kathy, but a time of year generally when they're announced, if you can answer that.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yeah. Well, our goal is always to make the announcements by September 30th, and I think we might be closer to doing that this year. So, it may be a little bit earlier, but our goal is to make it by the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30th.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. And there's some folks I can see who've raised hands. If you have questions, please put them in the Q&A because it's a little bit hard for us to find hands. So, the question is, “What if the partnership is dependent on the decision of who gets the award?” I think that has to do with a grantee-subgrantee issue. Like does it really matter, from BJA's perspective, whether the wrongful conviction entity is the applicant or whether the CIU is the applicant? I'm going to interpret it that way.

KATHARINE BROWNING: No, I don't think so.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And there's a question of whether this grant—whether a partner in the grant could be a licensed laboratory, where they're medical examiners or DNA or others, is that an appropriate partnership under the grant or, at least, an appropriate program to seek funding for, a partnership with a lab or a medical examiner's office?

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, you have to be careful along those lines because we may have other—it depends on exactly what the focus is of the project. Now, it's possible that to support the review of cases and an investigation of cases that that partnership can work, but, although it's already closed, we have the post-conviction solicitation, and so projects that would fit more fully under that really don't fit here. This is a different situation. So, it would depend on the details, but, yes, there are some where we got that support from DNA analysis on these cases.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: All right. And then the solicitation you're talking about is the post-conviction DNA grant, which comes out separately from this grant that has a similar funding, if I'm not mistaken?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Correct. Although, they got out of the gate a little sooner than I did this year, so that one has already closed—but it is as a general rule, it's posted every year, so…

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. And quick, another question is, “Over what period of time is the $600,000 distributed?”

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, this one is twenty-four months—so, over the two years.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: All right. And there—it's possible to apply for a no-cost extension for that if the goals have not been met during that time period, if I'm not mistaken?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Correct.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: All right. There's a question of whether—and I don't know whether you can answer this, but about examples of prior recipients, what have prior recipients used the grant money to fund.

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, I think we actually have this online on our website. We have that. I can't point directly to that, but maybe we can in a follow-up, we can point you to the places on our website that will talk about all of this. We've been in a number of different jurisdictions. There have been wrongful conviction entities that have been started up and those that have just been trying to handle the process. A lot of cases, backlogs. So, it's a lot. So, we'll point you to some places.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And I just put in the chat a link to a part of the BJA website which has a list of successful applicants from the past. You can search that. You can filter through tor the wrongful conviction or uploading the Rule of Law program, if you want to.

So, there's a question here: “If the CIU and a wrongful conviction entity are in partnership but separately for Category 1 and Category 2, if one is decided not to be funded, does that automatically assure the other will not be funded?” Now, are they kind of linked together?

KATHARINE BROWNING: No. They're not linked. And we will look at them when— there are some that are, if you do have two that come in and there's reference, you should reference the other one and we will look at that. But it's not something that either gives you a priority thing for having that companion or one that—if one is stronger and the other one is not, then we would just fund one.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: But you would recommend that if people are applying that way with one Category 1, one Category 2, they reference each other so that that's clear to the reviewers?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yes. You should.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: There's a question in the chat of, “May a CIU from one jurisdiction as the awardee partner with another CIU in a different jurisdiction as a subgrantee?” I think without a wrongful conviction entity being involved was the question. So, can CIUs apply either together as co-applicants or one with a subgrantee for the other?

KATHARINE BROWNING: I don't see why not. I'd have to know more about what that—as long as what you're planning is consistent with what the solicitation is you're asking for, sure.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Right. And there are issues, of course, with jurisdictional funding and who the oversight provider is and all of that, and so they would have to work that out with their independent jurisdictions. But from your view, in terms of this solicitation, no bar to that?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Again, I'm trying to be flex—because we know that a lot of you all are doing very innovative things, and partnerships are good, but partnerships look different in different places. So, again, as you're working through that, and you have more specific questions, please feel free to submit that to the Response Center and we'll get back to you.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: And, again, those links are in the slides that you put up, and it's in the PDF that is already in the chat.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Correct.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. In fact, I'll put it up once again just to make sure everybody has it. So, there's no issue there.

KATHARINE BROWNING: And it's also in the solicitation.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Right. How many awards are granted for this—is there a number of awards that are limitations or is an amount of money to be spent or both?

KATHARINE BROWNING: It's the amount of money that is to be spent. I think we ballparked in here, if everybody—we don't expect that everybody is going to come in for the full $600,000. Even when we had a lower cap, not everybody came in for that. So, when we get, if we get a lot, let's say, for $400,000, then we will fund more awards. So, most of them kind of came close. I think we ballparked about 15 [$15,000], but, again, it's possible. It's that funding cap.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay.

KATHARINE BROWNING: And the key thing for all applicants is just apply for what makes sense. I mean, if you're a smaller jurisdiction and you don't need as much, then apply for what makes sense, because when the peer reviewers are looking at it, they're going to look at your budget and say, "Oh, this is what—this sounds—this is a reasonable budget for what they want to do."

MARISSA BLUESTINE: So, under the solicitation, I think it lists up to eight awards for each of the categories for up to $600,000. If those came in under $600,000, there might be 10 awards at a lower number.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Yeah. Correct.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. So, it's the amount of money, not the number? 

KATHARINE BROWNING: Correct.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Got it. Okay. Looking for other questions in the Q&A. Just give me one more second. Okay. Kathy, any parting words you wanted to leave folks with? There is one here. “Is there a possibility to apply and be selected but funds left, based on everyone else, to accept a lesser amount?” I think, in other words, can they kind of up the grant if you're coming in under the funding cap? So, if I put in a request for $300,000, can I up it later? If the money hasn't been spent, I think is the question.

KATHARINE BROWNING: Not likely. I don't know. But, in general, we'll look to spend all of these funds on the current applications.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. Right. So, apply for what you think you're going to need?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Exactly.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Okay. Not seeing other questions. So now, Kathy, is there any parting words you wanted to leave folks with?

KATHARINE BROWNING: Not really. Just thank you all for your interest here. I can't encourage you enough to ask questions. Take advantage of the resources that we've provided there—the Response Center for any questions. And if you run into any technical difficulties—I do think that our system has improved a little bit, but always notify the appropriate technical assistance provider of any program or any technical issues you have or questions, so that there's a documentation of that issue, and so that they can respond to you in a timely manner.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: All right.

KATHARINE BROWNING: So, thank you all and thank you, Marissa.

MARISSA BLUESTINE: Thank you, Kathy. Thank you. On behalf of Kathy, the BJA, and the Quattrone Center, thank you all for joining us today. As I said, this has been recorded. It'll be posted on the BJA website when it becomes available, and we will also send it out to all registrants from the Quattrone Center. In the meantime, if you have questions, please, like Kathy said, make use of the resources that are made available to you. They're in the PDF that's been in the chat. If you have any trouble downloading that or any trouble accessing any of the information we've said, please feel free to reach out to me. My email is in the chat as well. Thank you all for joining us.