BJA FY 21 Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative for Law Enforcement Agencies

The Department of Justice is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights, increases access to justice, supports crime victims, protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and builds trust between law enforcement and the community. The Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative is awarding grants on a competitive basis to small law enforcement agencies and prosecutors' offices in rural locations. These grants will support improved training and technology, expanded community-based crime prevention programs, and partnerships with victim services providers. This initiative is intended...

This solicitation is limited to agencies serving rural communities. The following entities are eligible to apply for this funding opportunity: Sheriff’s offices serving rural population areas Local or county law enforcement agencies serving rural populations Tribal law enforcement agencies operating in rural areas or reservations County prosecutors’ offices or functional equivalents serving rural populations   To qualify as rural for the purposes of this solicitation, an applicant must provide services in a rural area, although the jurisdiction’s service area need not be exclusively rural. This definition holds for all entity types. For any municipality (e.g., town, village, or borough), the area must be considered rural and the population served must not exceed 15,000, based on the latest U.S. Census enumeration. To advance Executive Order 13929 Safe Policing for Safe Communities, as of October 28, 2020, the Attorney General determined that all state, local, and university or college law enforcement agencies must be certified by an approved independent credentialing body or have started the certification process to be allocated FY 2021 DOJ discretionary grant funding, as either a recipient or a subrecipient.  For detailed information on this new certification requirement, please visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/SafePolicingEO. All recipients and subrecipients (including any for-profit organization) must forgo any profit or management fee.

For technical assistance with submitting the SF-424 and SF- LLL in Grants.gov, contact the Grants.gov Customer Support Hotline at 800-518-4726, 606-545-5035, at Grants.gov customer support webpage, or email at support@grants.gov. The Grants.gov Support Hotline operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except on federal holidays. For technical assistance with submitting the full application in DOJ's Justice Grants System (JustGrants), contact the JustGrants Service Desk at JustGrants.Support@usdoj.gov or at 833-872-5175. The JustGrants Service Desk operates 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST Monday - Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, and federal holidays. An applicant that experiences unforeseen Grants.gov or JustGrants technical issues beyond its control that prevent it from submitting its application by the deadline must email the National Criminal Justice Reference Service Response Center (Response Center) at grants@ncjrs.gov within 24 hours after the application deadline to request approval to submit its application after the deadline. For assistance with any other requirements of this solicitation, contact the Response Center by telephone at 800-851-3420 or TTY: 301-240-6310 (hearing impaired only) or by email at grants@ncjrs.gov. Response Center hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. eastern time Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. eastern time on the solicitation close date. grants@ncjrs.gov