The NIJ is offering this grant to fund research on how public policy can reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system.

To advance Executive Order 13929 Safe Policing for Safe Communities, 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 eligible for FY 2022 DOJ discretionary grant funding. To become certified, the law enforcement agency must meet two mandatory conditions: (1) the agency’s use-of-force policies adhere to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and (2) the agency’s use-of-force policies prohibit chokeholds except in situations where use of deadly force is allowed by law. The certification requirement also applies to law enforcement agencies receiving DOJ discretionary grant funding through a subaward. For detailed information on this certification requirement, please visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/SafePolicingEO to access the Standards for Certification on Safe Policing for Safe Communities, the Implementation Fact Sheet, and the List of Designated Independent Credentialing Bodies.

All recipients and subrecipients (including any for-profit organization) must forgo any profit or management fee.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks applications for funding of investigator-initiated proposals for evidence-based, nonpartisan analyses of existing evidence to examine how observed racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system might be reduced through public policy.

Applications proposing research involving partnerships with criminal justice or other agencies should include a strong letter of support, signed (hard/wet, electronic, digital signature) by an appropriate decision-making authority from each proposed partnering agency. A letter of support should include the partnering agency’s acknowledgment that de-identified data derived from, provided to, or obtained through this project will be archived by the grant recipient with the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) at the conclusion of the award. Applicants and their potential partners are encouraged to review the NACJD’s policies and protections. If selected for an award, grantees will be expected to have a formal agreement in place with partnering agencies by July 1, 2023. That formal agreement must include a provision to meet the data archiving requirements of the award.

In the case of partnerships that will involve the use of federal award funds from multiple partnering agencies to carry out the proposed project, only one entity/partnering agency may be the applicant (as is the case with any application submitted in response to this solicitation); any others must be proposed as subrecipients.

Statutory Authority: Title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Sections 201 and 202).