U.S. Department of Justice: Supporting Innovation: Field-Initiated Programs to Improve Officer and Public Safety

Supporting Innovation: Field-Initiated Programs to Improve Officer and Public Safety (Supporting Innovation) invites applicants to develop and test solutions that will improve officer and public safety and save lives. Lessons learned from these projects can serve as models for the nation’s criminal justice system regarding reducing violent crime, including violent crime related to tribes and tribal members, and addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Supporting Innovation will support applications that pilot, assess, and implement original approaches that target emerging or chronic crime problems facing the country and placing officers and public at risk. Applications must present novel solutions and not duplicate other Bureau of Justice Assistance-funded initiatives. This approach enables the program to assist large, small, tribal, urban and rural jurisdictions solutions and to work directly with the field in support of their leading-edge efforts.

The program invites applicants to develop and test solutions that will improve officer and public safety and save lives in one or more of the following focus areas:

• Initiatives that address precipitous increases in crime. This includes combatting, addressing, or otherwise responding to precipitous or extraordinary increases in crime or in a type of crime at the state, local, or tribal level, especially violent crime, with strategies that enhance capacity to track, identify, and quickly respond to these crime issues.
• Strategies that address the needs created by violent crime related to tribes and tribal members.
• Projects that support innovative cooperative efforts between federal, state, and local law enforcement to identify and prevent violent crime committed by criminal aliens.

Applications are accepted through the following categories:

• Category 1: State, local, and/or tribal innovations: Projects will be site-based and will support the creation and implementation of strategies in the field at the state, local, or tribal level that address violent crime and improving officer and public safety. Applicants will document their concept and its outcomes so that others can learn from their innovation. Applicants are encouraged to show how they can create and pilot tools such as training curricula, toolkits, articles, videos, program assessments/evaluations, policy-relevant documents, and guidebooks that can be used by others in the field to replicate the success of the project. The applicant may work with a research partner to document implementation and to develop tools to support replication.
• Category 2: National or regional resources: Projects will support developing targeted national or regional strategies that advance innovative approaches with the potential to address a critical need or gap in the field, consistent with the overall objectives of the solicitation. These large scale projects must document how they will be used to benefit the field by offering assessments, tools, products, or research or evaluation results that will facilitate implementation or replication on a national scale. Regional projects must be designed as a model that is specific to a regional need, or could be implemented effectively regionally and replicated elsewhere. Tools and materials such as assessments, program manuals, program assessments/ evaluations, research reports, articles, training curricula, policy-relevant documents, guidebooks, and toolkits should be developed for use by other criminal justice practitioners and policymakers.

For Categories 1 and 2: Projects must develop and test solutions that will improve officer and public safety and save lives in one or more of the following focus areas:

• Initiatives that address precipitous increases in violent crime, including but not limited to gang violence and gun crimes. This includes combatting, addressing, or otherwise responding to precipitous or extraordinary increases in violent crime or in a type of crime at the state, local, or tribal level, with strategies that enhance capacity to track, identify, and quickly respond to these crime issues. These initiatives will enhance officer and public safety through the reduction of violent crime.
• Strategies that address the needs created by violent crime related to tribes and tribal members including missing and murdered tribal members.
• Projects that support innovative cooperative efforts between federal, state and local law enforcement to identify and prevent violent crime committed by criminal aliens.

Amount: A total of $6,150,000 is available to make 13 awards of up to $500,000 across both categories. The period of performance is 36 months.

Eligibility: Dependent on category, as follows:

• Category 1: State and local government agencies (including territories), nonprofit and for-profit organizations (including tribal nonprofit and for-profit organizations), and federally recognized Indian tribal governments.
• Category 2: Nonprofit organizations, for-profit organizations (including tribal nonprofit or for-profit organizations), institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education), faith-based organizations, and consortiums with demonstrated experience in addressing public safety challenges. This includes, but is not limited to, entities active in prevention, enforcement, prosecution, and intervention strategies.

Link: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=306681

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