BJA FY 15 PREA Program National PREA Resource Center | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The BJA FY 15 PREA Program National PREA Resource Center grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number BJA 2015 4265) is a discretionary Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) award designed to fund the continued operation and national-level support work of the National PREA Resource Center (PRC). The need for this work is grounded in federal data on sexual victimization in confinement settings. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that, in 2011 to 2012, 4.0 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2 percent of jail inmates said they experienced one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or by facility staff in the prior 12 months or since admission. The figures for youth are higher: an estimated 9.5 percent of adjudicated youth in state juvenile facilities and state contract facilities, representing roughly 1,720 youth nationwide, reported sexual victimization within the same general time frame. This funding opportunity reflects DOJ and BJA priorities to prevent abuse, improve responses when it occurs, and reduce the harm associated with sexual abuse in custody.

The PRC role is closely tied to the national PREA standards that DOJ finalized on June 20, 2012, through the Notice of Final Rule required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Those standards took effect on August 20, 2012, and apply broadly across correctional environments, including adult prisons and jails, juvenile confinement facilities, police lockups, and community confinement facilities. The standards are organized into 11 major areas that collectively describe what a prevention and response system should look like in confinement settings: prevention planning, responsive planning, training and education, screening for risk of sexual victimization and abusiveness, reporting, official response following an inmate report, investigations, discipline, medical and mental health care, data collection and review, and audits. A central compliance pressure point is the audit requirement. Agencies cannot be considered compliant overall unless they meet the PREA audit standards (cited in the announcement as 115.93, 115.193, 115.293, 115.393, and 115.401 through 405). Under those audit rules, one third of each facility type operated by an agency (or by a private organization on the agency’s behalf) must be audited each year within a three-year audit cycle. The first audit cycle began on August 20, 2013, which helps explain why sustained, nationwide technical assistance and resource coordination is emphasized in this competition.

Operationally, the grant supports the National PREA Resource Center that BJA originally established in FY 2010 through a competitively awarded cooperative agreement. The PRC is framed as a national hub that helps jurisdictions implement the PREA standards consistently and effectively. It is also described as a collaborative partnership spanning national, state, and local stakeholders, including representatives from adult prisons, jails and lockups, juvenile corrections, community corrections, tribal confinement facilities, and advocacy communities representing inmates, youth, and victims. In other words, the PRC is intended to be more than a single organization’s project; it is meant to function as a coordinated national resource that aligns policy, practice, training, and implementation support across many correctional systems and facility types. The announcement directs readers to the PRC website (www.prearesourcecenter.org) for background and existing resources, signaling that the funded entity is expected to maintain and expand a well-established national platform.

In terms of funding details, BJA anticipated making one award under this solicitation. The award ceiling was listed as $6,000,000, with no stated award floor. The CFDA reference is 16.735, identified as PREA Program Demonstration Projects to Establish Zero Tolerance Cultures for Sexual Assault in Correctional Facilities. There was no cost sharing or matching requirement, which typically lowers barriers for eligible applicants and places emphasis on the applicant’s national capacity, partnerships, and ability to manage a large-scale technical assistance and resource center function.

Eligibility was limited to nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education) and, more specifically, to nonprofits that guide correctional or criminal justice programs and policy initiatives with a national focus and impact. BJA strongly encouraged applications that include two or more organizations, with the understanding that one eligible entity must serve as the lead applicant and take primary responsibility for administering the funding and managing the full program, while other partners would be structured as subrecipients. Only one application per lead applicant would be considered, though subrecipients could participate across multiple submissions. This structure reinforces the PRC’s emphasis on broad, field-wide collaboration while keeping accountability centralized in a single primary grantee.

Key dates in the posting show this was a time-limited FY 2015 competition: the opportunity was posted May 5, 2015, with an application closing date of June 30, 2015, and an archive date of July 30, 2015. Applications were submitted through Grants.gov, and the listing included the standard Grants.gov support contact information for technical submission issues. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as BJA’s mechanism for sustaining a national center of expertise and coordination so that correctional and detention agencies across the country can better implement PREA standards, meet audit expectations, and build and maintain zero-tolerance cultures that prevent sexual abuse in custody and improve the response when incidents occur.

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