Grants for better responses to crime in your jurisdiction
Grant Website
Grant Guidelines
Deadline: Apr. 12, 2016
$3.4 million law enforcement grants to improve policing
As part of BJA’s Smart Suite, the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) grant program seeks to build upon analysis-driven, evidence-based policing by encouraging state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to develop effective, economical, and innovative responses to crime within their jurisdictions. Recipients of funding under this grant program will implement evidence-based interventions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of police agencies’ processes and procedures and establish sustainable partnerships with researchers to evaluate their effectiveness. All awards are subject to the availability of appropriated funds and to any modifications or additional requirements that may be imposed by law.
What this grant does for your agency
The nation’s current policing environment is prompting law enforcement agencies across the country to change the tactics and strategies they use to respond to pressing and chronic public safety issues. Concurrently, many law enforcement agencies are confronting increases in crime and violence within their jurisdictions, and are doing so with limited resources. To successfully confront these challenges, jurisdictions require problem-solving approaches that are data-driven, evidence-based, effective, and efficient. Promising approaches—which are defined as having the potential to reduce crime, increase case closure rates and agency efficiency, and improve relationships with communities served—must be scientifically evaluated and the results shared with the law enforcement community to increase the field’s understanding and use of evidence-based crime reduction methods. The goal of SPI is to identify, support, and test these promising tactics, practices, and strategies as well as explore new, unique solutions to public safety problems and criminogenic circumstances. SPI documents the resulting empirically tested best practices and lessons learned and widely disseminates them to the policing community to encourage the adoption of innovative and effective policing strategies nationwide.
Through SPI, BJA provides resources, training, and technical assistance to enable police agencies to identify and define their most pressing crime problems and institute lasting cultural and organizational changes that foster reliance on and effective use of evidence-based practices, data, and technology to address those problems. Applicants to SPI must enlist a specific individual or team of individuals to serve as the law enforcement agency’s research partner to inform and evaluate their proposed intervention, as well as use the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment) model to identify and analyze their selected law enforcement challenge and formulate their response. Since 2009, BJA has awarded SPI grants to 45 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States under national competitive solicitations. These agencies were selected to create a portfolio that is diverse in terms of organizational size, as well as the type of crime problems, criminogenic factors, or agency challenges they proposed to address.
BJA estimates that it will make up to 6 awards of up to $700,000 each for an estimated total of $3.4 million for a 36-month project period, beginning on October 1, 2016. Only a limited number of grants will be awarded.
Grant Eligibility
For full eligibility details, see the Grant Guidelines:
Eligible applicants are limited to state and local law enforcement agencies, federally recognized Indian tribal governments (as determined by the Secretary of the Interior) that perform law enforcement functions, or governmental non-law enforcement agencies acting as a fiscal agent for the applicant.
About the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
BJA’s mission is to provide leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to support local, state, and tribal justice strategies to achieve safer communities. BJA supports programs and initiatives in the areas of law enforcement, justice information sharing, countering terrorism, managing offenders, combating drug crime and abuse, adjudication, advancing tribal justice, crime prevention, protecting vulnerable populations, and capacity building. More
Grant Deadline
Grant applications are due no later than 11:59 p.m. EST, Tues., Apr. 12, 2016.
Apply
Funding Opportunity Number: BJA-2016-9208. Apply for the FY2016 Smart Policing Initiative Grants