FY2017 Appropriations for the Department of Justice Grant Programs

Contents

• Office on Violence Against Women (OVW)
• Office of Justice Programs (OJP)
• Research, Evaluation, and Statistics
• State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance
• Juvenile Justice Programs
• Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
• 21^st Century Justice Initiative

Summary

Each year Congress provides funding for a variety of grant programs through the Department of Justice (DOJ). These programs provide funding to state, local, and tribal governments and nonprofit organizations for a variety of criminal justice-related purposes, such as programs to combat violence against women, reduce backlogs of DNA evidence, support community policing efforts, assist crime victims, promote prisoner reentry efforts, and improve the functioning of the juvenile justice system. Congress funds these programs through five accounts in the annual Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations act: Violence Against Women Programs; Research, Evaluation, and Statistics; State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance; Juvenile Justice Programs; and Community Oriented Policing Services. For FY2017, the Administration requests a total of $2.361 billion for these five accounts.

The Administration's FY2017 request for DOJ's grant accounts includes several significant proposals. First, the Administration proposes to transfer $326 million from the Crime Victims Fund to the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). It also proposes to eliminate funding for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (-$210 million), while proposing to reduce funding for other programs, such as the National Criminal History Improvement program (-$23 million), and DNA backlog reduction initiatives (-$20 million). However, the Administration also proposes increases for grants to encourage arrest policies (+$11 million), grants authorized under the Second Chance Act (+$32 million), and programs for children exposed to violence (+$15 million). In addition, it proposes restoring funding to the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant (+$30 million), a program that was eliminated after FY2013, along with funding a variety of new programs and initiatives, such as the Byrne Incentive Grant program ($10 million), the Byrne Competitive Grant program ($15 million), and the Violence Reduction Network ($5 million).

The FY2017 CJS appropriations bill reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations (S. 2837) would provide a total of $2.270 billion for the five DOJ grant accounts. The committee recommends supplementing appropriations for OVW with a transfer of $379 million from the Crime Victims Fund. The committee-recommended funding for these five accounts is largely in line with the FY2016-enacted appropriation. The one notable exception is the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account, which the committee proposes funding at $1.184 billion, an amount that is 16.0% below the FY2016 appropriation. The committee also declined to provide any funding for any of the new grant programs proposed by the Administration.

The House committee-reported bill (H.R. 5393) would provide a total of $2.304 billion for the five DOJ grant accounts. The bill does not include a proposal to supplement funding for OVW with a transfer from the Crime Victims Fund. The House Committee on Appropriations also declined to provide funding for any of the new grant programs proposed by the Administration. Proposed funding for the Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (-19.8%), State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (-14.8%), and Juvenile Justice Programs (-31.8%) would all be below the FY2016-enacted funding. The bill would also move funding for programs that were funded last year under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance and Research, Evaluation, and Statistics account to the Community Oriented Policing Services account.

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FY2017 Appropriations for the Department of Justice Grant Programs

Each year Congress provides funding for a variety of grant programs through the Department of Justice (DOJ). These programs provide funding to state, local, and tribal governments and nonprofit organizations for a variety of criminal justice-related purposes, such as programs to combat violence against women, reduce backlogs of DNA evidence, support community policing efforts, assist crime victims, promote prisoner reentry efforts, and improve the functioning of the juvenile justice system. Congress funds these programs through five accounts in the annual Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations act: Violence Against Women Programs; Research, Evaluation, and Statistics; State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance; Juvenile Justice Programs; and Community Oriented Policing Services. This report provides an overview of congressional actions to fund DOJ's grant programs through these accounts for FY2017. The report also provides information on FY2016 appropriations for DOJ's grant programs.

Office on Violence Against Women (OVW)

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) was established to administer programs created under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 and subsequent legislation. These programs provide financial and technical assistance to communities around the country to facilitate the creation of programs, policies, and practices designed to improve criminal justice responses related to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

The Administration's FY2017 request for OVW is $489 million, 1.9% more than the FY2016 appropriation of $480 million. Of note, the Administration proposes transferring $326 million from the Crime Victims Fund to the OVW. The Administration's FY2017 request is mostly in line with the FY2016 appropriation, but it requests increases for grants to encourage arrest policies (+$11 million), civil legal assistance (+$8 million), grants to combat violence on college campuses (+$6 million), grants to combat abuse against the elderly (+$1 million), and grants to strengthen tribal justice systems so they can exert their jurisdiction over domestic violence cases (+$3 million). The Administration also proposes funding two new initiatives through set-asides from other grant programs: reducing firearm lethality in domestic violence cases and enhancing colleges' responses to instances of sexual assault. The Administration's request proposes reducing funding for Service-Training-Officers-Prosecutors Formula Grant (STOP) grants by $15 million.

The FY2017 CJS appropriations bill reported by the Senate Committee on Appropriations (S. 2837) would provide $482 million for OVW, of which $379 million would be derived from a transfer from the Crime Victims Fund. The committee largely followed the Administration's request, which, in turn, largely mirrored the FY2016 appropriations. However, the committee did not adopt the Administration's proposal to increase funding for grants to encourage arrest policies, civil legal assistance, grants to combat violence on college campuses, and grants to combat abuse against the elderly (the exception being grants to encourage arrest policies, which would receive a $2 million increase). The committee proposes funding nearly all of these programs at the FY2016-enacted level. The committee also rejected the Administration's proposal to reduce funding for STOP grants.

The House committee-reported bill would provide $528 million for OVW, an amount that would be 9.9% more than the FY2016 appropriation and 7.9% more than the Administration's request. However, the proposed increase is largely the result of the House Committee on Appropriations deciding to move funding for victims of trafficking grants to OVW from the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account. The committee generally proposes to fund OVW programs at FY2016-enacted levels. In addition, the House committee-reported bill does not include a proposal to supplement OVW funding with a transfer from the Crime Victims Fund.

Office of Justice Programs (OJP)

The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) manages and coordinates the National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Victims of Crimes, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and related grant programs.

Research, Evaluation, and Statistics

The Research, Evaluation, and Statistics account (formerly the Justice Assistance account) funds the operations of the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, among other things.

The Administration requests $154 million for this account for FY2017, a 32.8% increase over the FY2016 appropriation of $116 million. It requests increases in funding for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (+$17 million) and the National Institute of Justice (+$12 million). The Administration also proposes funding research on domestic radicalization as its own line item instead of a set-aside from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program. It requests $10 million to collect and report nationwide incident-based crime statistics.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations recommends $118 million for the Research, Evaluation, and Statistics account. The committee declined to recommend funding for any of the new programs the Administration proposed under this account. The committee would largely fund programs under this account at FY2016-enacted levels.

The House committee-reported bill includes $93 million for the Research, Evaluation, and Statistics account. The bill includes a recommended increase in funding for both the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, but the recommended amount is less than the Administration's request. The committee also proposes funding the Regional Information Sharing System under the Community Oriented Policing Services account.

State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance

The State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account includes funding for a variety of grant programs to improve the functioning of state, local, and tribal criminal justice systems. Some examples of programs that have traditionally been funded under this account include the JAG program, the Drug Courts program, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), and DNA backlog reduction grants.

The FY2017 request for the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account is $1.098 billion, which would be 22.1% less than the FY2016 appropriation of $1.409 billion. The Administration proposes eliminating funding for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP, -$210 million); the Paul Coverdell Forensic Sciences Improvement Program (-$14 million); grants to assist trafficking victims (-$45 million); the John R. Justice program, which helps with student loan forgiveness for attorneys in public service (-$2 million); and assistance for Indian tribes (-$30 million). However, it proposes to fund grants to assist trafficking victims with funds from the Crime Victims Fund. The Administration also proposes to use 7% of the funding under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance, Juvenile Justice Programs, and Research, Evaluation, and Statistics accounts to support tribal justice programs. In addition, it proposes reducing funding for the JAG program (-$93 million, though this is largely the result of eliminating the set-aside for security at the Presidential Nominating Conventions), the National Criminal History Improvement program (-$23 million), and DNA backlog reduction initiatives (-$20 million).

While the Administration proposes eliminating or reducing funding for several programs under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account, it has also proposed increasing funding for programs like reentry initiatives authorized under the Second Chance Act (+$32 million), programs for children exposed to violence (+$15 million), grants for residential substance abuse treatment (+$2 million), and programs to assist people with mental illness in the criminal justice system (+$4 million).

In addition, the Administration requests funding for several new programs under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account, including

• $10 million for the Byrne Incentive Grant program, which would be used to make supplemental grants to JAG program grantees who choose to use a portion of their JAG funding to support programs or initiatives that are evidence-based, or are promising and will be coupled with rigorous evaluation to determine their effectiveness;
• $15 million for the Byrne Competitive Grant program, which would be used to implement evidence-based and data-driven strategies on issues of national significance;
• $20 million for grants and technical assistance to state, local, and tribal courts and juvenile and criminal justice agencies to support efforts to improve the perception of fairness in the juvenile and criminal justice systems and to build community trust;
• $5 million for the Violence Reduction Network, which allows cities to develop data-driven, evidence-based strategies to reduce violence by consulting directly with and receiving coordinated training and technical assistance from multiple DOJ components; and
• $6 million for grants for efforts to counter violent extremism.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations recommends $1.184 billion for the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account. The amount recommended by the committee would be $86 million (+7.8%) more than the Administration's request, but $225 million (-16.0%) less than the FY2016-enacted appropriation.

The committee rejected the Administration's proposal to eliminate funding for SCAAP, the Paul Coverdell Forensic Sciences Improvement Program, and grants to assist trafficking victims. The committee also chose not to fund any of the new programs for which the Administration requested funding.

The committee-reported bill includes proposed cuts to several programs. For example, the committee proposes reducing funding for JAG (-$92 million) and SCAAP (-$110 million). It would also eliminate funding for the Prison Rape Prevention and Prosecution (-$11 million) and tribal assistance (-$30 million) programs. However, the committee adopted the Administration's proposal to use 7% of the funding under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance, Juvenile Justice Programs, and Research, Evaluation, and Statistics accounts to support tribal justice programs.

The committee proposes increasing funding for some programs, including drugs courts (+$1 million), prescription drug monitoring (+$1 million), grants under the Second Chance Act (+$7 million), the Mentally Ill Offenders Act (+$1 million), the National Criminal History Improvement program (+$2 million), residential substance abuse treatment (+$2 million), grants to combat economic, cyber, and high tech crime (+$1 million), and victims of trafficking grants (+$3 million).

The House Committee on Appropriations recommends a $209 million (14.8%) reduction in the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance account compared to the FY2016-enacted appropriation. The proposed reduction is partly the result of the committee eliminating funding for some programs (John R. Justice grants, the Paul Coverdell Forensic Sciences Improvement program, and programs for children exposed to violence) and moving funding for several programs to the Community Oriented Policing Services (e.g., tribal assistance, Second Chance Act grants, the Community Trust Initiative) and Office on Violence Against Women (trafficking victims grants) accounts.

The committee also proposes to fund the Bulletproof Vest Grant program as a set-aside from the JAG program. The report to accompany the House committee-reported bill also notes that the bill consolidates the hiring program under the Community Oriented Policing Services account into the JAG program.

The House committee-reported bill would provide increased funding for some programs, compared to FY2016-enacted levels, such as SCAAP (+$64 million), Project Safe Neighborhoods (+14 million), the Mentally Ill Offenders Act (+$2 million), prison rape prevention and prosecution (+$2 million), veterans treatment courts (+$1 million), and prescription drug monitoring (+$1 million).

The House Committee on Appropriations, like the Senate committee, chose not to fund any of the new grant programs proposed by the Administration.

Juvenile Justice Programs

The Juvenile Justice Programs account includes funding for grant programs to reduce juvenile delinquency and help state, local, and tribal governments improve the functioning of their juvenile justice systems.

For FY2017, the Administration requests $334.4 million for the Juvenile Justice Programs account, a 23.8% increase over the FY2016 appropriation of $270.2 million. The Administration's FY2017 request includes proposals to increase funding for the Part B formula grants program (+$17 million), Title V grants (+$24.5 million), and the Community-based Violence Prevention Initiative (+$10 million). The Administration is also requesting that funding be restored to the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants ($30 million), which were eliminated after FY2013. In addition, it requests $20 million for a Smart on Juvenile Justice Initiative, which would provide supplemental incentive grant awards to foster better outcomes for system-involved youth. The Administration did propose to reduce funding for youth mentoring grants (-$32 million), investigation and prosecution of child abuse programs (-$9 million), and the missing and exploited children program (-$5.2 million).

S. 2837 would provide $272 million for the Juvenile Justice Programs account, nearly identical to the FY2016-enacted appropriation ($270 million). As with other DOJ grant accounts, the committee declined to recommend funding for any of the Administration's proposed new grant programs. The committee would fund many of the programs under this account at the FY2016-enacted level. The notable exceptions are proposed increases for Part B formula grants (+$5 million) and Title V grants (+$10 million). The committee also recommended reducing funding for juvenile mentoring programs by $15 million.

H.R. 5393 would provide $184 million for the Juvenile Justice Programs account, an amount that is 31.8% less than the FY2016-enacted appropriation and 44.9% less than the Administration's request. The House Committee on Appropriations recommends eliminating funding for two long-standing programs under this account: Part B state formula grants and Title V grants. The committee also proposes eliminating funding for the Community-based Violence Prevention Initiative and the Improving Juvenile Indigent Defense program. The committee would fund several other programs under this account at the FY2016-enacted level.

Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)

The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Office awards grants to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States so they can hire and train law enforcement officers to participate in community policing, purchase and deploy new crime-fighting technologies, and develop and test new and innovative policing strategies.

The Administration's FY2017 request for COPS is $74 million (34.9%) more than the FY2016 appropriation of $212 million. The Administration requests a $42 million increase in funding for the COPS hiring program. It would also establish the Tribal Resources Grant program and training and technical assistance on COPS's collaborative reform model as separate line items in the account rather than set-asides from the funding for the hiring program.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations recommends a $3 million increase for the COPS account for FY2017, all of which was directed to a proposed increase in funding for anti-heroin task forces. Otherwise, the committee recommends providing funding for programs under this account at the FY2016-enacted level.

The House committee-reported bill would provide $299 million for the COPS account for FY2017, a proposed $87 million (41.0%) increase over the FY2016-enacted appropriation and $13 million (4.5%) more than the Administration's request. However, the House Committee on Appropriations proposes to move funding for several programs that were funded last year under the State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance and Research, Evaluation, and Statistics accounts to the COPS account. The only traditional COPS program the House Committee on Appropriations proposes to fund is the Methamphetamine Lab Clean-up, which is transferred to the Drug Enforcement Administration. It remains to be seen what effect the House Committee on Appropriations' proposal would have on the COPS Office given that the programs that would be funded under the COPS account are administered by the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and would, presumably, be transferred to OJP if Congress adopts the committee's proposal.¹

21^st Century Justice Initiative

As a part of its FY2017 budget request for DOJ, the Administration requests $500 million for the 21^st Century Justice Initiative. This proposed initiative would be a new mandatory program that would invest $5 billion—$500 million a year for 10 years—in criminal justice reform efforts. The initiative would use federal funding to promote innovative approaches to reducing both crime and unnecessary incarceration. The program would focus on achieving three objectives: reducing crime, reversing practices that have led to unnecessarily long sentences and unnecessary incarceration, and building community trust. States would be able to use funding to focus on one or more of the following in both the adult and juvenile systems: (1) examining and changing state laws and policies that contribute to unnecessarily long sentences and unnecessary incarceration, without sacrificing public safety; (2) promoting critical advancements in community-oriented policing; and (3) providing comprehensive diversionary and reentry services. In addition, this initiative would dedicate 10% of the funding for reform efforts in the federal criminal justice system, including improving skills, education, mental health, addiction, and other recidivism-reduction programming in the Bureau of Prisons.

Neither the Senate nor the House committee-reported bills contain funding for this program.

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Footnotes

1.

There is precedent for such action. In the early 2000s, Congress provided funding for several programs (e.g., Project Safe Neighborhoods, DNA backlog reduction initiatives, Paul Coverdell grants, offender reentry programs, the National Criminal History Improvement program, and the Bulletproof Vest Grant program) that were traditionally administered by OJP under the COPS account. Those funds were transferred to OJP. For more information on this and other issues related to funding for COPS, see CRS Report RL33308, Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS): In Brief, by [author name scrubbed].