DOJ awards $376M to jurisdictions to improve public safety

The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) awarded about $376 million in grants to reinforce public safety efforts across the United States.

“Crime and violence hold families, friends, and neighborhoods hostage. They also rip those communities apart,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Katharine Sullivan for the Office of Justice Programs said. “These programs simultaneously play a role in mending communities through preventing crime, apprehending and prosecuting perpetrators, facilitating appropriate sentencing and adjudication, and restoring communities and their residents.”

Roughly $252 million is being awarded to 929 different states, tribes, and local governments through the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program (JAG). JAG funding supports law enforcement; prosecution and courts; crime prevention and education; corrections; drug treatment and enforcement; technology improvement; victim and witness initiatives; mental health programs and others.

About $40 million in grants is being awarded through BJA’s National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. This will help law enforcement agencies and prosecutors address the challenges associated with sexual assault kits that have not been submitted to crime laboratories for testing.

Also, about $6.9 million is going to 20 state, local, and tribal prosecutors through the Innovative Prosecution Solutions for Combatting Violent Crime Program. This will help prosecutors receive training and technical assistance to use data in the development of their violent crime strategies.

Further, about $2.3 million will go toward reducing intellectual property theft and related crime through the Intellectual Property Enforcement Program. In addition, 12 awards totaling more than $3.2 million went to state and local policymakers and practitioners to review wrongful conviction claims cases and enact measures to prevent future errors. Also, 13 grants totaling more than $2.4 million went to state, local, and tribal governments for responding to incidents of sexual abuse in prison facilities.