FY25 Tribal Justice Infrastructure: Physical Plant and Corrections Operations Support Program Notice of Funding Opportunity Webinar

BJA FY25 Tribal Justice Infrastructure: Physical Plan and Corrections Operation Support Webinar

Serena Roche: Hello, everyone. Today's webinar BJA Fiscal Year 2025 Tribal Justice Infrastructure: Physical Plan and Corrections Operation Support will be presented by BJA's Grant Management Specialists Jeff Locke and Julius Dupree and will provide information on the purpose of the tribal justice, infrastructure, physical plan and corrections support program application requirements, allowable uses of funding, program goals and objectives, and tips and resources for navigating the application process. Thank you again for watching. Now let's turn things over to Jeff and Julius.

Julius Dupree: Thank you. Thank you all for joining this webinar to review the fiscal year 2025 Tribal Justice Infrastructure: Physical Plan and Corrections Operations Support Program.

So, my name is Julius Dupree and I am going to get us started. You'll also be hearing from Jeff Locke a little later in the webinar.

We will be covering a lot of information during this webinar. We're going to start with some background information on the Bureau of Justice Assistance, or BJA. Then we will provide an overview of the Tribal Justice Infrastructure Support Program. We will then walk through the two categories of the program, highlighting the specifics of each funding category as described in the notice of funding Opportunities, or, also known as NOFO. Next, we will walk through the funding process, and then we will wrap things up by identifying different resources available to support you during your application process.

Let's start by talking about the Office of Justice Programs, or OJP. So, the Office of Justice Programs provides grant funding, training, research and statistics to the criminal justice community. BJA is one of a number of grant making agencies located within OJP.

BJA strengthens the nation's criminal justice system. It helps America's state, local and tribal jurisdictions reduce and prevent crime, reduce recidivism, and promote a fair and safe criminal justice system. BJA's acting director is Tammy Greg.

BJA supports the field in several ways. We do so through investments, which is what we're talking about today, as well as by sharing knowledge on research on what works to build capacity and improve outcomes, and by supporting opportunities to connect with the field.

We will now transition to the specifics regarding the Tribal Justice Infrastructure Physical Plan and Corrections Operations Support Program. We will be referring to the program as the Tribal Justice Infrastructure Program, or TJIP for short.

TJIP supports jurisdictions implementing the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation, Tribal Justice System infrastructure program. It provides technical services and training to strengthen tribal justice system capacity, to keep communities safe and hold people accountable for crimes on tribal lands by addressing operations and physical infrastructure needs, including renovating, expanding, or replacing existing tribal justice-related facilities and building new permanent tribal justice-related facilities.

There are two categories that will be funded under this program. Category one, the physical plant component of TJIP will support operational planning technical expertise for tribal jurisdictions seeking to renovate, expand, or replace existing tribal justice-related facilities or build new permanent tribal justice-related facilities, which includes prefabricated, permanent modular or new standalone permanent facilities. Category two, the corrections operations component will support statistical analysis and facilitate technology expansion and adoption for tribal jurisdictions seeking to identify gaps/needs for tribal corrections facilities, for example, jails, detention centers and or leverage changes in federal law and recent court decisions to expand their jurisdiction, thereby responding to more crime and helping additional victims. Examples include Tribal Law and Order Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and McGirt versus Oklahoma Supreme Court case.

We're now going to walk you through the requirements of this funding opportunity. Eligible applicants include Native American tribal organizations (other than federally recognized tribal governments), educational organizations, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit organizations. For-profit organizations include small businesses and organizations other than small businesses.

Additional eligibility criteria to consider is there can only be one applicant submission per applicant. An entity may be proposed as a subrecipient in more than one application. Applicants under which two or more entities or project partners would carry out the federal award will be considered. However, only one entity may be the applicant for the NOFO. Any others must be proposed as subrecipients.

So, cumulatively, there will be $1,850,000 awarded under the TJIP. The maximum award amount for category one is 500,000, and the maximum amount for category two is 1,350,000. So that cumulatively will equal $1.85 million.

BJA will be making one award under each category. Applicants must enter an October 1st, 2025 award start date during the application submission period with an end date of September 30th, 2028 for a 36-month award period.

Now, Jeff and I will be discussing both categories in more depth. I will begin with category one, which focuses on the physical plant aspect of TJIP.

The overall goal of category one is to facilitate project planning, pre-construction transition, and/or facility activation of tribal justice, tribal infrastructure improvement, or enhancement projects. The program accomplishes this goal by improving tribal construction planning capacity, including feasibility and proposed usage of the facility for impacts on the tribal justice system, providing preliminary architectural design services as needed, developing plans for staffing and operations of proposed tribal justice facility and enhancing facility activation/transition planning to ensure a transition  from a construction project to a fully operational justice facility.

Funding can be used to support a wide range of justice-related facilities, and these include police departments, courts, detention centers, transitional living facilities or halfway houses, correctional alternative or treatment facilities, domestic violence shelters or safe homes, and/ or programs, and multipurpose justice centers.

If awarded, activities will include providing in-person and virtual support for active CTAS TJSIP grant recipients or CTAS purpose area four that will assist with maximizing available resources and seeking additional resources to effectively operate, maintain and sustain BJA-funded physical infrastructure projects.

Also, establishing and maintaining a technical approach for monitoring cost-effective implementation status of a CTAS TJSIP recipients to build and operate BJA-funded physical infrastructure projects, as well as participating in new grantee orientation training sessions, delivering monthly progress reports including TJSIP site visit updates, and maintaining a dedicated website with materials to assist grantees and the planning process for renovating, expanding, building and operating tribal justice facilities.

Jeff will now discuss category two, the corrections operations component.

Jeff Locke: The second category is corrections operations. Category two's goal is to conduct comprehensive assessments of factors driving violent crime challenges, correctional population trends, and resource consumption within tribal justice systems, including the drivers of violent crime, detention capacity, and recidivism. This is accomplished through the following objectives. Increasing tribal justice system capacity to prevent, investigate, and respond to violent crime, improving tribal criminal justice data infrastructure capacity, including technology adoption, as well as practices and protocols for collecting, storing, integrating, governing, monitoring and analyzing relevant information.

Enhancing tribal correctional data and forecasting analysis and improving data sharing across justice system stakeholders and assessing confinement resources to address serious, chronic or violent offenders and ensure that bed space availability supports the jurisdictions violent crime reduction goals.

The awardee will carry out the following activities. Providing ad hoc support to tribal leaders. Providing intensive services and support to two tribal jurisdictions. Activities may include conducting data collection, analysis, and forecasting to understand who is involved in tribal justice systems, needs of the victims and offenders, and ability of the system to meet them. Determining feasibility for technological enhancements and feasibility for adoption to improve tribal criminal justice data and accurately project correctional populations.

Informing strategic planning and priority setting that contemplates corrections spending and detention capacity.

Strengthening operational and coordinated law enforcement interventions to reduce violent crime and building operational capacity to collect and track violent crime, correctional populations and related data.

I'll turn it back to Julius to discuss agency funding priorities.

Julius Dupree: Thank you, Jeff.

So, BJA funding priorities include directly supporting law enforcement operations, including immigration law enforcement operations, combating violent crime, supporting services to American citizens, protecting American children, and supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault. The NOFOs will also include guidance on unallowable uses of funds. The Department of Justice grants financial guide is your go to resource to confirm allowability.

All applications must be submitted by an eligible type of applicant. All applications must request funding within programmatic funding constraints and must be responsive to the scope of the NOFO, and must include all items necessary to meet the basic minimum requirements.

The basic minimum requirements that are listed in every NOFO are important because your application will not advance to peer review and be considered for funding unless you meet all the stated requirements. All applicants are required to submit an application for federal assistance or an SF-424, a proposal narrative, budget detail form, which includes the budget details and narrative budget narrative information, applicant documentation of proposed subrecipients and procurement contracts. Curriculum vitae or resumes of key personnel. Project timeline and work product examples.

All applications that pass the Basic Minimum Requirements process, or BMR, will be reviewed based on the same criteria. These criteria include statement of the problem, which accounts to 15% of the application score, the project design and implementation, which accounts for 45% of the score, capabilities and competencies, which is 20% of the score. The plan for collecting the required data and information, which accounts for 5% of the score, and the budget, which accounts for 15%. All NOFOs include a checklist on the last few pages of the NOFO. We encourage you to use it to ensure that your application is complete.

I'm going to spend the next few minutes providing an overview of the OJP funding process. To apply for this opportunity, your entity must register with SAM.gov and obtain a unique entity identifier or UEI, and you must maintain an active SAM.gov registration status at all times.

For entities new to SAM.gov, the registration process may take several weeks. For those not new to SAM.gov, remember that your registration in SAM.gov must be reviewed every 12 months. Also, please be sure that your organization's point of contact in SAM.gov are current.

Applications are submitted to Office of Justice Programs electronically through a two-step process, which means you will be required to register/confirm users can access two different systems.

For step one, you need to complete an application for federal assistance or SF-424 in Grants.gov.

For step two, you will need to complete the full application, including required attachments in JustGrants, which is of the Office of Justice Program's grants management system. Note that we recommend completing each step at least 48 hours before the deadline. Note that the Grants.gov deadline is earlier than the JustGrants deadline.

A few important points about Grants.gov. Be sure to confirm your registration or register if you are new to the system, add or confirm users and roles for everyone you plan to have work on your funding application. Note that you can register and/or confirm users/ roles at any time. So don't wait. This is important because grants.gov is where you complete the application for federal assistance or SF-424. You can check the Grants.gov Quick Start guide for more tips.

Then you will complete the full app. After completing the first step, you will complete the full application in JustGrants. This includes standard applicant information, proposal abstract, proposal narrative, budgeting and associated documentation, memorandum of understanding or other supporting documents, if applicable, and any additional application components as specified in the NOFO. You'll also need to complete the Disclosures and Assurances information.

A logical question is what happens once you submit your application into JustGrants. After the JustGrants deadline has passed, OJP or Office of Justice Programs will thoroughly review all applications. This process typically takes several months. First, we check to confirm that the application contains the basic minimum requirements that were described earlier.

The peer reviewers, that are part of this process then assess the technical merits of an application. OJP staff then conduct a programmatic and fiscal review after the peer review process. And finally, OJP conducts a risk review.

So how will you know if you're if you have been successful?

You can visit OJP Grant Awards website to see all OJP awards made by year and program, even, your locality. The site is updated as awards are made. Successful applicants will be notified through JustGrants. If you receive a notice of an award, you must take specific steps in JustGrants to accept or decline the award within 45 days.

The Department of Justice Award Applicant or Acceptance Checklist on the JustGrants Resources website can walk you through the steps.

Before we close out the webinar, we just want to flag a few resources that you may find helpful as you move through the application process. One helpful resource is the OJP Grant Application Resource Guide, which provides additional guidance for applicants to prepare and submit applications to OJP for funding consideration.

The JustGrants Resources website offers tools to support the use of JustGrants, the online application and claims management system, which, as we discussed, is one of the systems used to submit your application.

We also provide support for the two systems that you will need to access to apply for funding. As it relates to Grants.gov, this is where you submit the application for federal assistance or the SF-424. You can call or email them for help if needed.

And JustGrants is where you're going to submit your application. You can call or email them if you need assistance as well.

We covered a lot of information during this webinar. We don't want to overwhelm you. We want you to feel free to reach out to the OJP Response Center with any questions.

And please access social media or other methods, to stay connected to BJA and OJP. And this concludes our presentation.

Serena Roche: Thank you, Jeff and Julius, for that thorough overview of this important funding opportunity. We hope you found the information presented here today to be helpful. If you are interested and eligible for this NOFO, here are the next steps to take. Access the NOFOs at Grants.gov and OJP.gov. Register in Grants.gov early as this process can take several weeks. Review program specific application deadlines and requirements. Contact the BJA National Training and Technical Assistance Center for support at [email protected]. For more information on the Office of Justice Programs, please visit ojp.gov.