Deadline: 05-Jun-2023
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) seeks applications for funding two providers to address the training and technical assistance (TTA) needs of the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) site-based grantees and to provide resources to current SAKI sites across the country working Jane and John Doe sexually motivated homicide cases.
The purpose of this announcement is to select two national TTA providers to deliver a wide range of TTA services to SAKI site-based grantees. This grant announcement does not solicit applications from individual jurisdictions to fund local SAKI projects.
Solicitation Categories
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Purpose Area 1: The National SAKI TTA Program
- The overarching goal of the SAKI TTA Program is to support law enforcement with the investigation of future, new, active, and old, inactive cases to solve and reduce violent crimes. A resounding theme from law enforcement is that funding is critically needed to support cold case units at the state and local levels to achieve SAKI’s goal.
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Purpose Area 2: The National SAKI Forensic DNA Services Technical Assistance Program
- There is a critical need in the field for funds to assist with the identification of unidentified human remains, with DNA being the most powerful forensic tool at law enforcement’s disposal. The identification of Jane and John Doe victims is not only crucial in providing investigative leads to identify suspects but also in repatriating the remains to their loved ones.
Categories/ Objectives/Goals
Purpose Area 1—the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Training and Technical Assistance (SAKI TTA) program
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Objectives
- Assist SAKI sites in implementing evidence-based activities to address existing challenges related to unsubmitted SAKs and to enhance the sexual assault response.
- Engage proactively with SAKI grantees to monitor their progress toward achieving their program goals by addressing challenges and identifying solutions.
- Communicate regularly with BJA to assess the impact of TTA services on SAKI’s goals and individual sites’ progress.
- Provide TTA to other jurisdictions interested in improving their response to sexual assault through evidence-based practices.
- In collaboration with OJP and stakeholder organizations, assist in the development, implementation, and dissemination of best practices, policies, and protocols for addressing systemic failures that lead to large numbers of untested kits as well as backlogs of violent crime cold cases, and identify efforts that will aid in preventing those failures from reoccurring in the future. This includes customized sustainability plans for each SAKI site.
- Assist advanced SAKI sites with the investigation and prosecution of all violent cold case crimes.
- Goals: The selected TTA provider will support all SAKI grantee sites in all six corresponding purpose areas; develop resources for the criminal justice field at large to elevate local jurisdictional responses to violent crime cold cases, particularly those that are sexually motivated; and leverage existing TTA resources available through BJA’s sakitta.org website, OJP, and DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), in addition to creating additional TTA tools to fill existing resource gaps.
Purpose Area 2: The National SAKI Forensic DNA Services Technical Assistance Program
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Objectives
- Assist SAKI site-based grantees in the identification of Jane and John Doe sexually motivated homicide cases utilizing current forensic technologies. Particular focus should be given to those sites that can demonstrate an ongoing threat to public safety as well as offer assistance to those grantees that have small, rural, and/or tribal entities within their jurisdictions.
- Assist SAKI site-based grantees in advancing the investigation and prosecution of their Jane and John Doe sexually motivated homicide cases. Collaborate with SAKI sites to ensure cases are reported to relevant databases.
- Engage proactively with SAKI grantees to track and monitor the progress of their cases.
- Assist SAKI sites with the repatriation of their jurisdiction’s Jane/John Doe victim’s remain to their loved ones.
- Communicate regularly with BJA to assess the impact of the TTA services on SAKI’s goals and individual sites’ progress under this Purpose Area 2.
- Communicate regularly with BJA to address any challenges and/or delays in processing Jane/John Doe cases.
- Goal: Deliver forensic DNA services to SAKI grantee sites working with Jane and John Doe sexually motivated homicides.
Funding Information
- Purpose Area 1: Approximately $3,000,000
- Purpose Area 2: Approximately $4,000,000
- Period of Performance Duration (Months): 36
- Anticipated Number of Awards:2
Eligibility Criteria
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Purpose Area 1:
- Eligible applicants are for-profit organizations, nonprofit organizations (including tribal nonprofit or for-profit organizations), faith-based and community organizations, institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education), and consortiums with demonstrated experience providing national and local-level training and technical assistance. All recipients and their subrecipients (including any for-profit organizations) must forgo any profit or management fee.
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Purpose Area 2:
- Eligible applicants are states (including territories), units of local government (including federally recognized Indian tribal governments as determined by the Secretary of the Interior), nonprofit and for-profit organizations (including tribal nonprofit or for-profit organizations), and institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education). For-profit organizations must agree to forgo any profit or management fee.
- An applicant entity may submit more than one application, if each application proposes a different project in response to the solicitation. Also, an entity may be proposed as a subrecipient (subgrantee) in more than one application.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.