NOFO: Community Courts Initiative in the US

Deadline: 24-May-23

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) seeks applications for funding to support efforts by state, tribal, and local governments to establish and enhance community courts in their jurisdictions.

This program furthers the DOJ’s mission by providing resources to communities to enhance public safety, build trust between law enforcement and the community, and increase access to critical behavioral health treatment and recovery support, and other support services. In addition to the Community Courts Initiative, BJA also funds the following programs to assist communities in addressing community safety, public health, and other social issues.

Common Principles and Practices of Community Courts

Although these projects may have many differences, in general, they all rely on a set of common principles and practices:

Enhanced Information: Utilizing more specialized staff training (about complex issues like substance use disorder and mental illness) combined with more comprehensive information (about defendants, victims, and the community context of crime) to help improve the decision-making of judges, attorneys, and other justice system officials.
Community Engagement: Engaging residents and people with lived experience to help identify, prioritize, and solve community safety, public health, and other social issues within a jurisdiction.
Collaboration: Bringing together justice system stakeholders (such as judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, probation officers, and court administrators) and other potential community stakeholders (such as social service providers, residents, victims’ groups, and schools) to improve interagency communication and trust between community members and local government, and to foster new responses to problems.
Individualized Justice: Using evidence-based risk and needs assessment instruments to link defendants to individually tailored community-based services (e.g., job training, behavioral health treatment and recovery support, other support services, and safety planning).
Accountability: Employing community restitution mandates and regular compliance monitoring – with clear consequences for noncompliance – to improve the accountability of defendants.
Outcomes: Collecting and analyzing data (outcomes, process, costs, and benefits) on an active and ongoing basis to evaluate the effectiveness of operations and encourage continuous improvement.

Goal

The goal of the Community Courts Program is to support efforts by state, tribal, and local governments to establish and enhance community courts in their jurisdictions.

Objectives

An applicant should address all the objectives listed below in the Proposal Narrative and Time Task Plan.

Establish or enhance court-based intervention programs to prioritize and expedite the provision of treatment and recovery services to individuals who are frequent users of justice system, health, and other services and who commit misdemeanor offenses.
Emphasize alternatives to incarceration by tailoring sentences to each defendant to improve community safety, enhance confidence in the justice system, and reduce recidivism.
Build and maximize the capacity of jurisdictions to ensure all participants are identified, assessed, and referred to services.
Enhance the use of community services by participants in the community court docket, including case management, housing assistance, and service coordination.
Develop and maintain partnerships and collaborations with service providers to enhance the provision of treatment and recovery support services.
Support the development, enhancement, and translation of research and knowledge of researcher-practitioner partnerships.
Collect lessons learned and other examples of use to the field at large from grantees and disseminate the information via publications, media platforms, and conference presentations.