Funding Opportunities for Your Community in 2024: Prosecution, Defense, and Courts

Transcript also available as PDF.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, “Funding Opportunities for Your Community in 2024: Prosecution, Defense, and Courts,” hosted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Michelle Garcia, deputy director for programs within BJA to begin the presentation. Michelle?

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Daryl, and hello everyone and thank you for joining us for this presentation today. As Daryl said, my name is Michelle Garcia. I serve as the deputy director for programs. I'm joined by my colleague today, Michelle White, who is a senior policy advisor in BJA. All your questions today will be answered by a Michelle.

Today, we're going to provide an overview of the Office of Justice Programs as well as the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Highlight some of our plan solicitations that are relevant to prosecution, defense, and courts. Leave you with some resources to assist you as you consider applying or preparing and submitting an application. And then as Daryl mentioned, we've reserved some time at the end for question and answer.

But before we jump in, we'd like to get a little bit of information about you and your experiences applying for funding or receiving funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance. So our first question is, "Have you previously applied for BJA funding?"

A poll should have launched for you, and if you could please select Yes or No, we'd like to know about your experiences previously applying for funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance. We have, folks, just a few more seconds to respond.

All right, Daryl, could you close that poll for us, please? All right. Thank you.

So of those that answered, it looks like the majority have actually applied for BJA funding previously, but we have quite a few people with us today who've not applied for BJA funding before.

So, I'll reiterate, we're going to stress where you can go for additional information as well as for resources to help you with an application.

Our second question is, "If you have applied for BJA funding before, were you successful in that application and did you receive a BJA award?" And one of the things that I'll note as we go through and talk about our solicitations, many of our solicitations are discretionary or competitive. And for most of those, we actually receive significantly more applications than we're able to fund with the resources that have been allocated. And so just because you've submitted an application in the past and may not have received an award, it's not necessarily an indication about the value of the program or the services that you're proposing to provide or even the quality of your application. It's recognizing that there are often very difficult decisions that have to be made.

All right, Daryl, could you please go ahead and close that poll for us? All right.

So for those of you that have applied for funding before, actually the majority of you have been successful and received BJA awards previously. A small number of you have not, but again, hopefully we'll provide you with some tools that'll assist you in any future endeavors.

So for those of you who may be less familiar with the Office of Justice Programs or the Bureau of Justice Assistance, OJP is one of three grant-making arms of the Department of Justice, along with the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Within OJP, there are six program offices, all of which provide grant funding. So our webinar today will focus on the funding opportunities that are planned under our organization, the Bureau of Justice Assistance. But we also encourage you to check out the websites for our sister agencies—the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the SMART Office—for funding opportunities they may have available as well.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. We were created in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our nation's criminal justice system. And we're led by our director, Karhlton F. Moore.

Our work focuses really in three areas. First, in making investments and providing grant funds to organizations, agencies, and communities all across the country to support a wide range of criminal justice and criminal justice-related activities. We also work to share knowledge, both from our grantees as well as our training and technical assistance providers, working to develop resources, guides, reports, highlight best practices or innovative activities in order to replicate promising practices across the country and share knowledge and move the field forward. And lastly, engagement—that a significant part of our efforts are hearing from you: What is working in your community? Where are the challenges? Where could you use additional support and assistance? And our partners in national, state, and regional, and local organizations all across the country.

This year, we have over 80 planned solicitations. And so today we're going to focus on those for prosecution, defense, and courts and, as I said, provide you some additional information. I do want to note a couple things. First, because of the current state under which we're operating under a continuing resolution and do not have a final FY24 budget, all of the solicitations that we'll be talking about today are subject to the availability of appropriations and potential legislative changes of statutory requirements. And so the information that we're providing might change, can be updated, and include the addition, substitution, or cancellation of any of these planned solicitations. So we encourage you to routinely check back and we'll provide some resources later where you can actually sign up to be notified of when funding solicitations are released.

There are two resources that, if nothing else, that you get out of this entire presentation, I strongly recommend you bookmark these two sites, where you can go to get information about what funding is available. I'll actually start on the right side under "Planned Solicitations." The DOJ Grants Program Plan provides information on all planned solicitations for the Office of Justice Programs, so all the six offices I mentioned, as well as the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. One of the features of the website is you can go in and you can do a keyword search. So, if you are looking for a specific type of resource—say you're looking for funding to support a treatment court or say you're looking for funding to support prosecution of a specific type of crime—you can go in and enter in those keywords and it'll bring up a list of all the planned solicitations that might be able to support that type of activity.

On the left is the website for the Bureau of Justice Assistance where we will post all of our solicitations as they become available. Similarly, it also has that ability to do a keyword search so you can find the opportunities that best meet your needs.

Now when it comes to the types of grants that we give out, BJA has two types of awards: formula and discretionary. Our formula grants are typically awarded on a non-competitive basis, which usually means that every eligible applicant receives some funding and that that funding is typically dependent on factors, which often include population and crime rates.

Most formula grant programs are administered by a state administering agency, or an SAA for short, and that SAA is often then subawarding funds out to other state and local organizations. I'll provide some information shortly about where you can find information on who your SAA is, and I strongly encourage you to develop a relationship with them if you don't already have one.
For discretionary grants, you would apply directly to OJP or the Bureau of Justice Assistance. These grants are typically competitive and awards are based on predetermined review processes and availability of funds. As I mentioned earlier, for most of our programs, we receive more applications than we have actual funding for, so we try and fund the strongest proposals based on those objective criteria.

I want to highlight a few of our formula grant programs—but I'll mention before we go into details of these planned solicitations, that where we are in our funding cycle is that most solicitations have not yet been released. They have started coming out. If you go to our current funding website, you'll see that some have been released, and each day, each week we'll be releasing more solicitations. So in some cases, we will not be able to answer specific questions about planned solicitations, since they have not yet been released. But I do encourage you to look at prior-year solicitations because in many cases, our grant programs are the same or very similar from year to year. And those prior solicitations might be able to answer your questions or give you some guidance.

The first formula grant program I want to mention is our Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant. And this is the largest and really the flagship grant program that we have for funding state, local, and tribal criminal justice and related efforts. There are nine broad purpose areas. And as I mentioned, our formula funds will go to the state administering agency who will then subaward those dollars out to support any or all of these particular program areas. So one thing I also encourage you to do is when you're looking into building a relationship with your state administering agency is gaining an understanding of when they release their solicitations or their request for proposals for the funds that they are subawarding out.

Under JAG, we make both awards to states, but there are also units of local government that are eligible to apply directly for JAG funds. Last year, we made 56 state awards totaling over $209,000,000. And to date, 949 local awards totaling over $96,000,000. We anticipate the solicitation for JAG will be released sometime early this summer.

The Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program is a relatively new formula program. This was established under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was signed into law in 2022. And it provides for five years of funding—$150,000,000 a year—to support state crisis intervention court proceedings and related programs or initiatives. Similar to JAG and SAA, we'll be passing through many of these dollars through a subawarding process. And unique to SCIP, states actually have to establish a state crisis intervention advisory board to help determine how those funds are actually going to be used within each state. So not only is there an opportunity to learn from your SAA how those funds may be available to your agency or organization, but also to give input into how a state is using those dollars.

Project Safe Neighborhoods is a nationwide initiative that brings together federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials, prosecutors, community-based partners, and other stakeholders to identify the most pressing violent crime problems a community may be facing and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. Across all the federal districts, PSN follows four key design elements of successful violent crime reduction initiatives, which are: 1) community engagement, 2) prevention and intervention, 3) focused and strategic enforcement, and 4) accountability. Funds are awarded to fiscal agents for those federal judicial districts. And in many states, this is the same state administering agency as for other BJA awards.

And the last formula program I wanted to mention is our John R. Justice Program. The purpose of this program is to encourage qualified attorneys to choose careers as prosecutors and public defenders and to continue in that service. The JRJ Program provides loan repayment assistance for state and federal public defenders and state prosecutors who agree to remain employed as public defenders and prosecutors for at least three years. BJA makes the awards to states that apply for funding under the program solicitation to a state administering agency, who then establishes a statewide program and conducts outreach and education and solicits applications from eligible recipients.

To find more information on your state administering agency, you can go to the OJP website that will provide a list, not only of the state administering agencies for any Bureau of Justice Assistance funding, but also the state administering agencies for other OJP offices, including the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Office for Victims of Crime. With that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Michelle.

MICHELLE WHITE: Thank you.

All right. So we're going to talk about a fairly substantial list of discretionary grants. And one thing to keep in mind, we're going to go in alphabetical order by the name of the grant program. As you can see here, there's quite a lengthy list. And they touch on a number of different topics. So, if we haven't gotten to one that you think makes sense, we will get to it on this list—I promise, we're going to jump into all of them.

Also, keep in mind that maybe your agency would not be the applicant, but if you're part of a larger project, you may bring the grant to some of your colleagues and other agencies that might be the applicant and you, your office, or those that you serve would then benefit.

So, let's dive into the first one. All right, Adult Treatment Courts. So, treatment courts of a number of different kinds fall into this category. This is actually currently open solicitation right now. There's a state category, local, tribal, and up to $900,000 per award for planning and implementation, up to $1 million per award for enhancements, including no cost TA—and I'm going to weave a lot of discussion about training and technical assistance within the descriptions of all these grant programs today—and also up to $2.5 million per award for statewide. So, there's also a training and technical assistance provider, in fact, there are a number that support this. So, as Michelle was saying earlier, if you are interested in finding out what current programs look like that are currently being funded, finding those training and technical assistance providers websites is a great indication of that. So, the initial Grants.gov deadline for this is May 2nd and the final one is May 9th.

All right, so next we have a rather interesting one here at BJA. This one is very specific to the Collaborative Crisis Response and Intervention Training Program. So, this is funding that you can apply for to actually implement Crisis Response and Intervention Training, or CRIT, that supports law enforcement; corrections including probation, parole, jails; sheriff's department on how to partner with behavioral health providers to support those that you encounter that may have behavioral health, intellectual development, or physical disabilities. The maximum award is up to $250,000. And examples of this are implementing the new—or implementing the training where it's not been implemented before—and then also using that data in different settings. So, you might do it with law enforcement and then do it with corrections, and then also tracking the outcomes after folks have been trained.

So next, we're going back to the courts for a Community Courts Initiative. So, these are similar to, but not the same as adult treatment courts, as in it's not narrowly focused on folks who have substance use disorders. So, the applicants here can again, be localities, tribes, or states. And the funding is to support these very neighborhood community-based court programs that bring together courts, members of the justice system and many other different providers, some being treatment and some more restorative justice. So, there are two categories here. One is to plan or implement a court, and the other one is to enhance it. And the maximum award is up to $900,000.

Next is the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program, or COSSUP, for short. So, the applicants here can be local, tribal, or states. The maximum award varies on the size for the local applicants, up to $1.6 million. And then for the states, the applications can be up to $7 million, which is largely then subawarded out to localities across the state.

So COSSUP is really a whole lot of things. I'm going to highlight a couple of things that might be of interest to you all. And they would include law enforcement deflection; prosecutor pretrial and court diversion; the implementation of court navigators; embedding social workers in prosecutor's offices, public defense offices and legal aid agencies; other alternatives to incarceration; expansion of treatment services; access to recovery support services, including peers and housing; and then also exploration of newer promising practices—so, this is a special category within COSSUP where you bring an idea, you work with a researcher, and you can test that idea.

Okay, next is the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation, or CTAS. So, this is really bringing a number of different purpose areas together for tribes to apply in one concise place. This is another one of the solicitations that is currently open. Again, this is for federally recognized Native American tribal governments or consortium of multiple Indian tribes. There are several different purpose areas that apply here. One of them is for justice system strategic planning, and the other one would be adult tribal justice systems, everywhere from law enforcements to court, to corrections, prosecution, and everything in between.

So for Purpose Area 2, up to $150,000 per award, and for Purpose Area 3, up to $900,000 per award. And again, this is another one of our solicitations where there's a lot of training and technical assistance. And some of the activities that you can use this for are hiring personnel, again, with diversion and deflection; prevention; connection to treatment and treatment services; recovery support services; training—really, the list for this one goes on and on and on. So, if you are a tribal entity, I would strongly encourage you to check out this solicitation.

Okay, the Crime Gun Intelligence Center Integration Initiative, which I will only say once because I actually got it right the first time. So, the purpose of this is to encourage local jurisdictions to work with their ATF partners to identify firearms that are used unlawfully, and their sources, with the ultimate goal of prosecuting perpetrators engaged in violent crime. So, the maximum award here is up to $700,000 per award. And some of the activities include supporting prosecution, staff training, developing policies, utilizing new tools or technology, and supporting collaborative work groups.

Okay, Emmett Till Cold Case Investigations Program. So, this program supports state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution agencies to investigate and prosecute unsolved homicide—cold case murders—suspected of having been racially motivated. It also includes support for victims, families, and stakeholders impacted by these cases. Of note is that funds are limited to violations of civil rights statutes resulting in death that occurred no later than December 31st, 1979. So, this is eligible—eligibility here is state, local, and tribal enforcement and prosecution agencies. And the maximum per award is up to $750,000.

All right, Field Initiated: Encouraging Innovation. This is one of two really interesting programs here at BJA that really encourage the field to think big. So, examples under Field Initiated are really quite vast, actually. So, you can respond to precipitous increases in crime, including violent crime; improve the system capacity to track and respond to these increases in crime; address substance use disorder and efforts to prevent or respond to overdose, including fatal overdoses; improve outcome for justice involved individuals who are currently or formerly incarcerated; and also respond to hate crimes and/or an increase access to justice and supportive services.

So, there are two categories here. One is for state, local, tribal, or regional program projects, and the other are for national strategies. The estimated number of awards is up to 10 for this year, and the average award amount is around $1 million. Again, this is a really great way to try a different approach in tackling any of these issues.

Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program. So, this supports innovative cross-system collaboration to improve responses to and outcomes for individuals with mental health or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who are in the justice system or reentering the community. It is available to state, local, and tribal units of government. And some examples of how to utilize these funds are to build or expand existing justice and mental health collaboration programs, pre-arrest deflection, prosecutor and court diversion, and also creating and expanding mental health courts.

Okay, The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Program supports state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution agencies and their outreach to and education of the public, victims, and their staff and partners about hate crimes. This program also reimburses expenses associated with the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. And this is open to state, local, and tribal enforcement and prosecution agencies. The maximum award for Category 1, which is for state and regional applications, is $4 million. And for Category 2, single site applications, is up to $400,000.

Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA. So, this program supports the prosecution of violent crime cold cases where DNA from a suspect has been identified. And then funding also supports investigative activities and crime and forensic analyses that could lead to prosecution. This has a little bit longer of an eligibility criteria for state, local, tribal, special district governments, prosecuting agencies, law enforcement agencies. And the maximum funding for this is up to $500,000 per award.

So, this is the other really broad solicitation that is similar to Field Initiated, but the focus here really is on improving community safety. So, everything that is within this, that is really the end goal. Applicants might be tribal, nonprofits, private, public- and state-controlled institutions of higher education, and local non-law enforcement government agencies. The maximum award here is substantial, up to $2 million per award. And this is really focused on creating innovative strategies with the goal of improving community safety, focusing on economically disadvantaged neighborhoods where crimes are persistent and concentrated; engaging with the community and residents, leaders, other partners really entrenched in the community; and also working with a research partner to document the program that you're going to implement and then really develop tools and examine outcomes.

Smart Prosecution. So, the goal of this program is to support prosecutors' offices to reduce caseloads, improve processes, and provide modern technology to better manage and track cases. This is open to state and local prosecutorial agencies, tribal governments with prosecution functions and also consortia of tribal governments. The maximum award is up to $385,000. And the activities here are really about being smart in terms of reducing caseloads, modernizing offices, hiring staff to really do some data analysis, updating information technology.

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, or SAKI, is open to state law enforcement agencies, small agencies, units of local government, prosecutors' offices, tribal governments, and governmental non-law enforcement agencies acting as fiscal agents. For up to $2.5 million per award, SAKI supports multidisciplinary community response teams to inventory, track, and expeditiously test previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits; collect and test lawfully owned DNA from offenders and arrestees; produce protocols and policies; provide resources for investigations and prosecution; and also optimize victim notification.

Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Convictions Program supports case reviews and post-conviction claims of innocence and focus on those cases at greatest risk of error. This is open to local, tribal, private institutions of higher ed, public- and state-controlled institutions of higher ed, and is up to $600,000 per award. Some examples of some of these strategies or activities include reviewing cases post-conviction and appeal claims of innocence with the focus on those greatest at risk, collecting and analyzing data to support the prevention of error, enhance efforts to review and manage claims of innocence, and then also recommending practices for mitigating systemic issues and preventing wrongful convictions.

And next is Veterans Treatment Court. So we spoke about adult treatment courts and community courts. So this is another very court-centric focus where veterans are the folks that are in these programs. So, the eligible applicants are local, tribal, and special district governments as well as public housing authorities and Indian housing authorities. There are several categories here around planning, implementing, and enhancing or expanding treatment courts and services anywhere from $900,000 up to $2.5 million for statewide awards. And again, this can be for early identification of potential referrals, enhancing services, recovery housing, overdose prevention, and then collaboration.

So I mentioned earlier a couple of times training and technical assistance. So this slide gives you information about BJA's National Training and Technical Assistance Center. This is a really great place to go if you know what your issue is that you're trying to solve, but you don't quite know what the right solution is—either a grant program or you can't find a grant program to match this. So I would highly recommend you go and check this out because the beauty of training and technical assistance is it's open to anyone and it's free. So I would check this out. You can use it to gain resources to gain support, to support training, to fund peer-to-peer site visits, to identify consultants to help come to you to improve your local systems, lots and lots and lots of things—they're great people to talk with.

I would also strongly encourage you, again, for any of these programs that were discussed today, go on BJA's website and look for their further information about the solicitation, but also about the training and technical assistance that is available even if you're not a grantee—and that is the case for many, many of the grant programs that we have. And you will find a wealth of information across all of those providers.

All right. I think, Michelle, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you, Michelle. And as I mentioned earlier, we want to leave you with some additional tools and resources that can assist you as you look at solicitations to determine whether this is a good fit for you and also as you work to put together your applications.

First, when we release solicitations, for almost every solicitation we also have compiled what we call a solicitation overview. When a solicitation is released, there'll be a webpage that you're directed to that provides some of the basic information. When is the deadline to apply? You will see two deadlines for all of our solicitations. The first is a Grants.gov deadline, which is where you start your application. There's a few pieces you submit through Grants.gov and then you'll be directed to JustGrants to submit the bulk of your application.

For each website, you'll be able to download the solicitation, which are generally very lengthy documents. We try and include all the information that is necessary for you to consider and to submit your application. And so, a good starting point is actually with the solicitation overview document. This is really a one-page document that highlights the basic information, who is eligible to apply. So that's a great place to start to see even if your organization is eligible to be a primary applicant.

But, as Michelle mentioned, even if your agency isn't, we strongly encourage partnerships, and you may be able to partner with an entity that is eligible and receive a subaward under that particular application. So, who may apply, why would you want to apply for this type of funding, the amounts that are available, and then some types of activities that we've historically seen funded under these types of programs. So, great place to start to get some basic information. If it looks like it might be a good fit for you, then we strongly encourage you to download the full solicitation and dive into it to get additional information.

For each solicitation we release—actually, for most solicitations that we release, we will also host a funding webinar that goes through the solicitation. Provides information around things that's important for applicants to know and answers any questions you might have about that solicitation. So we will always post the information on our Upcoming Webinars webpage and you can find those recordings, and the materials, posted typically a week or so after the webinar is held.

I also want to highlight that this webinar today is part of a series that we are doing on our planned FY24 funding opportunities. We held two last week. We have two more coming up this week and two more next week. And so, if you have colleagues or other parts of your organizations work in these other areas, we encourage you to check out those webinars as well.

A really useful resource for applications is the OJP Grant Application Resource Guide. And I say this as someone who's actually spent a large part of my career in the nonprofit sector applying for federal awards. This was often a resource that was my go-to starting place for questions that I had when I was submitting applications to the Office of Justice Programs. It is really the A-to-Z guide on all things related to the application. If you can't find an answer here, we'll give you a couple resources in a moment where you can get some additional assistance.

For the many of you who said you'd not applied to BJA before, one of the recommendations I have is to look at what a successful application from another entity actually looks like. This is a request we were hearing over and over from folks in the field saying, “Well, I applied, I wasn't successful. It was really helpful to get the strengths and weaknesses to my application, but can I also see what a successful application looked like?” And we've been working with grantees who were successful in their applications to get their permission to post their applications, so you can actually see.

We continue to add more examples each week, and so, please check out our Successful Applications page to see what another organization submitted and was successful in getting funding.

And I mentioned that our application process is a two-part process. The second part and the bulk of the application will be through our electronic grants management system or JustGrants. If you are successful, this is also where you will manage your award. And the JustGrants website has numerous resources to help you learn about and navigate the JustGrants system. They have trainings every day, every week. They have online videos and job guides, resources, frequently asked questions, you can get individualized user support. And so, if you're not familiar with JustGrants, this is a great place to start learning about that system.

If you have questions that are not answered in the other places that you've looked or you need some more directed technical assistance, you can reach out directly to both Grants.gov and JustGrants, which are both available by phone or online.

And then also wanted to highlight some resources if you are successful and do receive an award. Even at this point where you're considering applying or know you're going to apply and you've not received funding before, it's helpful to look at these resources to get an understanding of what are some of the requirements or things that you'll need to know if you do receive an award.

You can stay up-to-date and get contacted anytime we release a solicitation. So if you go to our Subscribe page, you can actually sign up for the Funding News, where you'll get a weekly notice of new grant opportunities as well as application tips. You can also subscribe by texting your email address to 468-311. We also post our announcements for funding on our social media, so follow us on Facebook or X, formerly known as Twitter. We have additional resources available on our YouTube page. And as I mentioned, we'll post all of our solicitations on our website at bja.ojp.gov.

As you're working through your solicitations or applications, one last resource—if you can't find an answer anyplace else—please contact the OJP Response Center, which is available to any applicant or potential applicant Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time.

With that, we will turn to your questions. So please use the Q&A feature to submit your questions. As we've gone through the presentation, we've started trying to address some of these in writing, but we'll go through these as well.

So there was a question about will you receive access to a recording to reference later? The recording transcript and PowerPoint slides will be posted to the BJA website and an email will be sent to all registrants when this is available.

A question about pre-prosecution—so organization asked, “We are pre-prosecution diversion and most funding is for treatment courts. Can we apply for a treatment court funding?” Michelle, do you want to take this one?

MICHELLE WHITE: Sure. So if you are pre-prosecution, most likely that would not end up—that would not end up in court and so you wouldn't want to apply for treatment court funding. But you could apply for—and sorry, I put my shorthand because those are very long program titles, in the chat. COSSUP is the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program if you are really focusing more on the substance use side. If you're focusing more on mental health, you would want to consider JMHCP or the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program. Both of them allow for co-occurring, so I would look at both of those as well.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you.

“Will any be funding be available for forensic DNA analysis training or research?” So we actually have several programs related to forensic DNA analysis. This includes our Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program. That is both a formula and a competitive award program, so states receive formula funding and then subaward those dollars out. But also there can be direct applications under the competitive program. We also have our DNA Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction or CEBR Program, Prosecuting Cold Cases Using DNA, which we talked about, as well as the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, and then lastly, our Post-conviction Testing of DNA Evidence.

“If we applied for one of these grants last year and were denied funding, can we resubmit a similar application again with updated information?” Yes, absolutely. We absolutely encourage you to apply again. And for many of our solicitations, if you were not successful and did not receive funding, you should have received a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of your application, which we recommend helping you in your reapplication.

“Are tribal defenders eligible for JRJ funding?” Yes. So if you go to the JRJ webpage on the BJA website, you can find more detailed definitions of prosecutor, defender. And there's also an opportunity under JRJ for individuals who work at nonprofit organizations who are operating under a contract with a state or unit of local government who devote substantially all of the employee's full-time employment to provide legal representation to indigent persons in criminal or juvenile delinquency cases to be eligible. Under those definitions for both prosecutor and public defender, anyone who is a full-time employee of a state, local, or tribal government is eligible.

“If we just applied for a JAG grant through our state, that's the only opportunity we have to apply for that funding?” Right. So yes, if the—as I mentioned, the way the Byrne JAG Program works, it is a formula grant. BJA awards dollars to the state administering agency. The state administering agency then engages in its own solicitation process or request-for-application process, and then makes decisions about subawards that it gives out in those states. I can tell you that as a former SAA, those processes vary state by state. Some have an annual solicitation process, some may have a biannual, some may do it more frequently than once a year. And so I would really suggest contacting your SAA to find out additional information about their funding processes for those awards.

“Are there upcoming solicitations and participated for organizations that are training and technical assistance providers?” Yes. That's a great question. We actually did not focus on our training and technical assistance awards in these webinars, but if you go to the DOJ Program Plan, if you type in say, a keyword search for “training and technical assistance,” it should bring up the plan solicitation specifically around TTA.

“We want to educate legal professionals about people with intellectual developmental disabilities in ways to divert individuals. Do any of these programs apply?” Michelle, do you have an answer for that one?

MICHELLE WHITE: Sure. So there are, I think ways to embed that within some broader programming that would focus on behavioral health. But if you're looking strictly for the training, I would really take a look at the Collaborative Crisis Response and Intervention Training Program. That one is really focused on using the curriculum and does include—beyond behavioral health—intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you.

“We're looking to hire more ADAs to staff our various treatment courts and potentially build out a larger unit in our office with a case worker, etc. They're pleas in lieu of incarceration after an arrest has already been made. We tackle mental health and substance abuse. I was planning to apply under enhancing treatment court grants, but should I focus on another one of these instead.” Michelle?

MICHELLE WHITE: Wow, that's a big question. So without knowing a lot more about your actual—if it is truly a treatment court, yes, Treatment Court. If you are really looking at doing court diversion, either around mental health or substance use, I would go back to potentially COSSUP or JMHCP to really look at this. So if it really is a treatment court, you're not probably going to get funding under COSSUP or JMHCP, but if you're doing court diversion, those are two other options for you. And then also, you could also look into either JAG funding to support this or potentially the newer SCIP funding, depending on the details of what you're trying to achieve.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thanks, Michelle.

“I volunteer with a nonprofit that is providing peer case management support and mental health diversion. Can we apply for your grants?” It depends on the solicitation and the eligible entities. Many are available to community-based organizations, nonprofits, small businesses, universities. I would say that one thing I would recommend is, once it's posted, viewing the Community-Based Organizations webinar we did last week that gave more information about those solicitations where nonprofits are specifically eligible. But again, even if your nonprofit is not directly eligible to apply for an award, there may be an opportunity to partner in your community with an organization that is eligible where you could be a subawardee in providing those support services in a local or regional or state diversion program.

“Do you know when the Hate Crimes Program will open for solicitations this year?” So if you go to the DOJ Program Plan and you did a keyword search for “hate crimes,” it should bring up our hate crime plan—hate crime solicitations. If you look at the details, it'll indicate which quarter we anticipate releasing the solicitation. So unfortunately, I can't give you more specific information at this time, but it'll at least give you an idea in which quarter it is anticipated that it'll be released.

“For the forensic DNA-related grants or funding, are these available for nonprofit or for-profit organizations?” Again, it depends on the solicitation itself. So as those solicitations are released, start with the solicitation overview and it'll tell you who's eligible to directly apply. Since most of these solicitations have not yet been released this year, I recommend looking at prior-year solicitations. All the forensic DNA-related grants are solicitations we've previously put out. So if you look at prior-year solicitations—which are often similar or the same from year to the year—that will give you some guidance on what has occurred in prior years before this year's solicitation is released.

“Are there any awards that can fund state public defender offices? The only ones that I see are the Wrongful Conviction Award Program and the Post-Conviction DNA Testing, which is a small niche area looking for something that can support and support innovation more broadly.” Michelle, do you want to take that one?

MICHELLE WHITE: Sure. So I love that you used the word “innovation.” So this might be a really great opportunity for you to consider a project under Field Initiated and partner with a researcher, try something new, and then build the evidence. So that's one place where the world is much broader in terms of what you can apply for.

MICHELLE GARCIA: The other thing I would add to that is this type of activity is absolutely fundable under Byrne JAG. And so while you wouldn't be applying directly to BJA for this, this is an opportunity again to reach out to your state administering agency to learn more about their process for subawarding their state Byrne JAG funds. I also mentioned the local Byrne JAG funds. So if you go to the Byrne JAG site on our website, you can also find out if your city or county received a direct Byrne JAG award, and then reach out to the contacts there to see how the Byrne JAG dollars are being used locally and if it's a possibility for them to support a public defender's office.

All right, Daryl, are there any questions in the chat that we missed? Oh, here's one more. “Are there any grants to help with legal representation for immigrants?” Michelle, do you have a response for that one?

MICHELLE WHITE: I don't—I can't think of one that is that narrow to a specific target population.

MICHELLE GARCIA: I would say again, under John R. Justice, we support student loan repayment for public defense, which would include for immigrants. I think under our Byrne JAG, we support legal representation for criminal representation that would include for immigrants. The other place that might be a useful resource is the Department of Justice's Access to Justice Office, which may have some additional resources.

All right, Daryl, any questions in the chat that we missed?

DARYL FOX: Yeah. There's several that are coming through in the chat and one's just asking about grants for human trafficking work, education prevention protocols, and such. And I'll go ahead and put in BJA's program partner agency OVC. They do have a lot of grants opportunities on those topics and they'll have funding webinars such as this as well. So I'll put that link in there that you can reference.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Great. Thank you.

DARYL FOX: And then you should be able to see several others if you want to go through that.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Okay. So there's a question about a local municipality who wants to add security to their courts. depending on what specifically is being asked about, It may be eligible under the Byrne JAG Program. There's also some resources that may be available through the Department of Homeland Security. But again, it would depend on what the specific costs are—and that would be either through your unit of local government who was eligible to receive a direct Byrne JAG award, or through the state administering agency and their process for issuing subawards.

There was a question about, “Can you define restorative justice as it relates to the courts?” Michelle, is that something you can address?

MICHELLE WHITE: So what I would say, my non-answer answer sadly is, it really—I would look at each solicitation that references restorative justice to understand what the parameters are for that particular solicitation because it probably does look a bit different whether you're talking about community courts or reimagining justice for example. So I would—that's a really great question. I would take a deeper dive into those solicitations to see if there are variances.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you. There's a question on anything for gang initiatives or anti-gang initiatives. So I mentioned the Project Safe Neighborhoods formula grant program, which historically has focused on gang or gun violence. Again, that is a partnership between the federal U.S. attorney's offices and a local fiscal agent, which in many cases is a state administering agency for other BJA funds. And then there is a subaward process where the states put out those resources. I also recommend possibly attending or viewing the webinar that is scheduled next week specific to law enforcement that will have some programs that highlight responding to violent crime, including gangs.

And I think those were all of the questions.

DARYL FOX: Somebody asked about last week's community-based organization webinar. I'll go ahead and put that link in that you'll be able to access and that should be posted later this week at some point.

MICHELLE GARCIA: I see two more questions. “Does the NTTAC offer TTA on trust and relationship-building across justice system partners? When I've looked, I've not found TTA on this topic.” There may be elements of it that they do. We have over a hundred training and technical assistance providers and NTTAC is really the point of entry for all of that training and technical assistance. So I would recommend reaching out to NTTAC with that specific question. And they can often, if there is not a direct place that they'll point you, we'll actually work with you to identify subject matter experts to be able to respond to a specific need that you have.

“Are there ways to find other stakeholders like research institutions looking to partner on grant applications?” That is a great question. What I recommend—and I say this as someone who used to apply for funding from the Office of Justice Programs—it's to build some relationships with your local colleges and universities that have research programs and often are looking to partner with community-based organizations or other types of agencies in order to apply for grant funding.

If you go to the National Institute of Justice website, you can also see lists of awards from prior years, which will give you some insight as to research partners and the types of things that they are focused on and evaluating. And there may be an opportunity there to reach out to an identified researcher to see if they would be interested in partnering on something that you're interested in applying for.

All right, Daryl, anything that we missed?

DARYL FOX: That's about it in the queue at this time.

MICHELLE GARCIA: All right. Well, we are right at time. So I want to thank everyone for your participation today. Again, the recording and the materials will be available on our website shortly. Encourage you to check out the rest of our funding series on FY24 funding opportunities. And wish you all the best in your considerations of applying and developing and submitting your applications. Thank you all so much.

DARYL FOX: On behalf of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and our panelists, we want to thank you for joining today's webinar. This will end today's presentation.