BJA FY 12 Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Training and Technical Assistance Program

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Through this FY 2012 grant announcement, BJA will select a national training and technical assistance (TTA) partner to work with BJA and its federal partners on a new initiative to improve community safety. This new initiative, the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) program, supports comprehensive place-based and community-oriented initiatives that involve service providers from multiple sectors and disciplines, as well as community representatives from all types of organizations, to work together to reduce and prevent crime and revitalize communities. Research suggests that crime clustered in small areas, or “crime hot spots,” accounts for a disproportionate amount of crime and disorder in many communities. As a result, the last two decades have seen the development of new evidence-based strategies that target these issues and a separate set of activities designed to address community capacity to prevent and deter future crime as a primary component of neighborhood revitalization. In times of limited resources, local and tribal leaders need tools and information about crime trends in their jurisdiction and assistance in assessing, planning, and implementing the most effective use of criminal justice resources to address these issues. They also need a core foundation of resources and tools to support data-driven strategy development, community-driven capacity building for collaborative problem solving, and assistance to identify and implement evidence-based and innovative strategies to target these drivers of crime. A multi-faceted approach like BCJI targets crime in the locations where most crime is occurring and can have the biggest impact while also building the capacity of the community to deter future crime by addressing three of the social impacts most likely to impact crime: physical disorder; social economic status and resources; and the “collective efficacy” of the neighborhood. The national TTA partner will help lead place-based, community-oriented efforts to prevent and reduce crime and improve the quality of life of residents in the community. The TTA provider will provide ongoing TTA to BCJI implementation grantees who will plan and implement a place-based, community-oriented crime strategy in a targeted neighborhood and to BCJI enhancement grantees who will enhance an existing community-based initiative by designing and implementing a place-based community-oriented crime strategy in a targeted neighborhood as a component of a broader neighborhood revitalization strategy. The TTA provider will also provide limited assistance to a group of unsuccessful applicants to assist them in building capacity to leverage future resources and develop broadly available resources for the field to share the knowledge leveraged from BCJI. These TTA activities for grantee sites will include assisting with an analysis of the crime in each community, engagement of residents, and refinement of strategies during an initial planning period; supporting the cultivation of cross-sector partnerships; providing ongoing support to the research partnership to ensure the sites effectively use data, research, and innovation to support the development of each grantee’s comprehensive crime strategy; helping communities leverage resources and create sustainability plans; and assisting with the collection and use of outcomes and outcome data. BCJI is part of the Administration’s larger Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI) that supports local and tribal communities in developing place-based strategies by seeking to align federal housing, education, justice, and health programs with the overarching goal of transforming neighborhoods of concentrated poverty into neighborhoods of opportunity. The U.S. Department of Justice will model the breakdown of funding silos by coordinating federal efforts and encouraging grantees to coordinate their local efforts with programs and services provided by other federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Education (ED), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury). BCJI TTA activities are likely to be coordinated with federal interagency work and TTA activities.

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