Tribal Justice Systems

Program now funded under Assistance Listing 16.596 and Assistance Listing is pending archival.

Goals: To provide key funding to tribal justice systems to develop, support, and enhance adult and juvenile tribal justice systems and the prevention of violent crime and crime related to opioid, alcohol, and other substance use disorder.

Objectives:

To support the critical and priority needs of tribal justice systems, to prevent crime, and to ensure tribal safety through the development, implementation, and enhancement of strategies, including the following:
• To engage in targeted strategic planning to improve tribal justice and community safety as it relates to violent crime, enhancing the capacity of tribal prosecutors and tribal courts and opioid, alcohol, and other substance use disorder, including review of key data, partnerships with researchers, and building the capacity for crime analysis.
• To prevent and respond to violent crime in tribal communities, including investigations, forensics, prosecutions, information sharing, and supervision and re-entry in coordination with other key federal and state partners.
• To enhance the tools and resources for tribal prosecutors, courts, and corrections agencies, including tribal probation and tribal jails, and to effectively respond to crime and related tribal safety.
• To implement enhanced authorities and provisions under the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA) and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 and to support the development of joint jurisdiction courts with state and local courts.
• To prevent future crime by addressing the risks and needs of young adults (ages 18–25) who are involved with or at risk of involvement with the justice system.
• To ensure safety through coordinated support for the re-entry of returning tribal members from federal or state prison sentences.
• To develop, enhance, and continue programs to improve the safety and effectiveness of tribal law enforcement officers such as planning for and developing their own law enforcement agency, law enforcement support as part of a larger strategy, or court security issues such as adding an officer at the courthouse to improve court security.
• To develop, implement, and enhance substance abuse and crime prevention, interventions, and alternatives to incarceration to address crime related to the opioid epidemic. This can include opioid, alcohol, and other substance use disorder and related crime prevention; healing to wellness courts; intervention; or treatment, including those that prevent and address the needs of drug-endangered children.

Performance Measure 1: Graduation/completion rate of program participants in a Drug Court/Healing-To-Wellness/Treatment program; and,

Performance Measure 2: Number of Grantees that developed a completed a final written strategic/action plan.

All final award decisions will be made by the Assistant Attorney General, unless a statute explicitly authorizes award decisions by another official or there is written delegation of authority to another official. For successful applicants, JustGrants will send a system-generated email to the Application Submitter, Authorized Representative, and Entity Administrator with information on accessing their official award package in JustGrants. The award package will include key information (such as funding amount and period of performance) as well as award conditions that must be followed. The Authorized Representative for the entity should accept or decline the award within 45 days of the notification.

The review procedure for applications is specified in the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) and generally includes eligibility and responsiveness, merit, programmatic, budget, and risk reviews.