Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Maximizing State Reforms | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Maximizing State Reforms (BJA 2016 8975) is a discretionary grant opportunity from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance (USDOJ-OJP-BJA), funded under CFDA 16.827. It is built around a central problem: incarceration levels and correctional costs have remained extremely high for decades. The opportunity points to roughly 2.2 million people incarcerated in 2014 across federal, state, and local facilities (about 1 in every 110 adults), alongside persistent crowding and resource strain in many systems. It also highlights the long-term budget pressure on states, noting that corrections spending grew from about $12 billion in 1988 to more than $55 billion by 2014 (even after accounting for inflation). The grant is positioned as a way for states and partner organizations to reduce unnecessary incarceration, improve the cost-effectiveness of criminal justice policies, and redirect resources toward strategies that strengthen public safety.

This grant sits within the broader Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), launched in 2010 as a public-private partnership between BJA and The Pew Charitable Trusts. JRI is described as a multi-stage, data-driven reform process rather than a single program change. The model relies on a governmental working group that is bipartisan and includes multiple branches of government, reflecting an emphasis on durable reforms that can survive political transitions. That working group is expected to dig into corrections and supervision data to pinpoint the specific drivers of prison growth and spending in that jurisdiction, develop policy options that are both cost-effective and evidence-informed, and then support implementation of reforms designed to manage correctional populations while also improving public safety outcomes. A core expectation is that savings achieved by reducing expensive, low-value incarceration practices are reinvested into high-performing public safety and recidivism-reduction strategies in the community.

The opportunity also frames JRI as a culture change effort. Beyond lowering prison populations, it encourages states to institutionalize collaboration across agencies, use data routinely in decision-making, and expand evidence-based practices. The funding rationale is supported by findings from the JRI State Assessment Report funded by BJA and authored by the Urban Institute. That report reviewed 17 JRI states and found steady progress toward the initiative's main goals: controlling corrections costs and reinvesting in strategies that reduce recidivism. Among the eight states that had JRI policies in effect for at least one year, all saw meaningful reductions in prison populations, and five met or exceeded their population reduction targets. While the long-term impact was still developing at the time, the report suggested the reforms had strong potential to generate substantial savings and prevent future prison growth. The Urban Institute continues to track outcomes in those states and in additional states that began justice reinvestment work after the report.

A major theme in the notice is that every state system is different, so the starting point must be detailed analysis of local drivers. Even so, the opportunity notes that many JRI states encountered similar underlying problems. Common cost and population drivers included high parole and probation revocation rates, sentencing policies and practices that tended to incarcerate low-risk people instead of using alternatives, policies that contributed to long lengths of stay, gaps or inefficiencies in community supervision and service delivery, and delays or high denial rates in parole processing. In response, states often pursued overlapping sets of reforms anchored in evidence and measurement. Examples described include implementing risk and needs assessments, setting accountability measures through performance and outcome reporting, using earned credits to encourage compliance on supervision, making sentencing changes, adopting swift, certain, and fair responses to technical violations, creating or strengthening mandatory post-incarceration supervision, expanding problem-solving courts, streamlining parole processes and expanding parole eligibility, and investing in reentry programs designed to reduce recidivism.

In practical terms, the grant is aimed at supporting state-level justice reinvestment reforms and the infrastructure needed to make them work: rigorous analysis of drivers, structured policy development, implementation support, and reinvestment planning tied to measurable outcomes. Eligible applicants include state governments, federally recognized Native American tribal governments, public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, and for-profit organizations other than small businesses, reflecting that states may work through a range of lead entities or implementation partners. The award ceiling listed is $1,750,000, with an anticipated five awards. The original and current closing date for the opportunity was April 11, 2016, and it was posted February 9, 2016.

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