Section 1. An Overview of the Year

The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) was established to help America’s communities develop strategies to reduce victimization and restore a sense of security to our neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. BJA provides funding and technical assistance to aid the diligent and often unsung work of criminal justice practitioners fighting crime, terrorism, and drug use at the state and local levels.

In 2001, BJA supported a wide range of initiatives to bring security and an efficient, responsive justice system to every American community. BJA provided this support for all 50 states, for the 5 U.S. territories, and for thousands of regional governments, cities, rural towns, schools, and neighborhood organizations throughout the United States. BJA funding and technical assistance make a critical difference for many of these communities, some small and rural, others large and urban, which lack the resources to adequately fund every component of an effective criminal justice system.

BJA’s two largest grant programs—the Byrne Memorial Grant Program and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG) Program—are guided by the principle that federal dollars should support initiatives that work and that are backed by the communities they serve. Both programs emphasize local decisionmaking and control, and they have had a significant impact on the safety of millions of Americans by allowing states and local communities to craft their own responses to local crime and drug problems.

In FY 2001, BJA administered $500 million in Byrne formula grants and $78 million in Byrne discretionary awards. Formula funds were awarded to the states and territories, which then made subawards to state and local units of government and to nonprofit organizations. Discretionary funds were awarded directly to state and local jurisdictions, Indian tribes, individual criminal justice agencies, and nonprofit organizations. BJA administered $490 million in LLEBG grants in FY 2001, making awards to more than 3,100 jurisdictions in the 50 states and 5 U.S. territories.

A third major funding source, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), provided funds for states and local governments based on their detention and incarceration of undocumented criminal aliens. Including FY 2001 payments, nearly $3.4 billion has been distributed to state agencies, sheriffs, and local jails through SCAAP.

BJA also funded more than 100 training and technical assistance projects in FY 2001. These projects provided vital support to state criminal justice administrators; practitioners managing law enforcement, adjudication, and corrections agencies; and rural and tribal justice systems.

Ensuring America’s Safety

When our nation reduces crime, violence, and illegal drug use it is because citizens and criminal justice agencies at all levels of government work together. At the direction of the U.S. Attorney General, BJA began an intensive collaboration, called Project Safe Neighborhoods, with federal, state, and local prosecutors and law enforcement officials to combat gun-related crimes and violence in communities across America. This unprecedented partnership will give prosecutors and community leaders the resources and information they need to remove violent criminals and the guns they use from our neighborhoods. As part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, BJA began awarding $75 million to local jurisdictions through the Community Gun Violence Prosecution Program to hire prosecutors focused on gun crimes.

BJA also supported the efforts of communities and local justice systems across the nation to form community-based partnerships focused on two things: preventing crime and prosecuting every criminal, not just violent felons. The community-focused initiatives funded by BJA in FY 2001 demonstrated that strategic planning works because it brings together federal, state, and local resources and integrates a wide range of responses to complex problems. For the first time in many communities, the criminal justice system includes youth and gang initiatives, dispute resolution and community prosecution programs, community courts, and diversion programs for juvenile and mentally ill offenders.

Justice for America also means helping our nation’s law enforcement officers investigate, prevent, and respond to acts of terrorism. BJA supported three important initiatives in FY 2001 that provide critical assistance to the law enforcement personnel, investigators, and community leaders who are charged with ensuring America’s terrorism preparedness:

• The State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program, which provides training for command officers and investigators in the detection, investigation, and prosecution of extremist criminal activity, including activity inspired by international events.
  
  
• Funding and technical assistance to help the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command secure the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Protecting the athletes, spectators, dignitaries, and media representatives at the games was the most enormous and costly security undertaking in the history of the United States.
  
  
• Funding for a White House-led effort to help American citizens prevent, prepare for, and respond to acts of terrorism. As part of this initiative, a Citizens’ Preparedness Guide will be distributed nationally in FY 2002. The guide is a key component of President Bush’s USA Freedom Corps initiative.

Meeting the Needs of Those Who Protect Us

The Public Safety Officers’ Benefits (PSOB) Program, administered by BJA’s Office of Benefits, was created in 1977 to provide a one-time financial benefit for families of federal, state, and local public safety officers killed in the line of duty. PSOB’s scope has since broadened to cover permanently disabling injuries to eligible public safety officers and educational benefits for surviving family members. In FY 2001, PSOB responded to approximately 370 claims, awarding more than $26 million in benefits to surviving families.

BJA’s response to the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11 included expediting the payment of financial aid to the families of police officers and firefighters killed in the attacks. In the week following the attacks, Congress and the Attorney General directed BJA to do everything possible to simplify the PSOB process and pay claims within 30 days.

Immediately after September 11, BJA staff began working every day to eliminate paperwork for these claims, making payment possible in most cases within a few days. Nearly 400 claims stemming from the attacks were paid through the program by March 1, 2002.

BJA also responded to the September 11 attacks by significantly increasing funding to two national organizations, the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) and Concerns of Police Survivors, which provide emotional and financial assistance for the families and colleagues of fallen public safety officers. As part of this effort, NFFF presented an innovative training course for fire chiefs, “Taking Care of Our Own,” to help them prepare for the trauma associated with line-of-duty deaths. More than 800 survivors and 130 honor guards from across the nation participated in the foundation’s annual memorial services held in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in October 2001.

Concerns of Police Survivors provides services for families of fallen officers and cosponsors National Police Week, held each May in Washington, D.C. In 2001, 313 police officers killed in the line of duty were honored at the event. Several hundred local law enforcement officials participated in regional trainings entitled “The Trauma of Law Enforcement Death,” and family members of slain officers participated in workshops and seminars devoted to issues surrounding grief and recovery.

A federal-local partnership, the Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP), helped to save the lives of our nation’s law enforcement officers by providing funds for state and local public safety agencies to offset the costs of bullet-resistant and stab-resistant vests. BJA administers the program, which covers up to 50 percent of the cost of each vest, entirely through a special web site, http://vests.ojp.gov. In the program’s first 3 fiscal years, 1999 to 2001, BVP funds allowed 7,200 state, local, and tribal jurisdictions to purchase more than 280,000 vests. Many of these jurisdictions are small, rural departments that lack the resources to equip their officers with this important safety device.

Building an Integrated Justice System

A truly comprehensive justice system will exist only when justice system agencies have the ability to share vital information. The need for access to complete and reliable criminal justice information took on new urgency in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. One of the most important investments we can make for the future of the justice system is to make sure that every level of government has the ability to share information through integrated information systems.

BJA supports justice information sharing through the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Information Technology (IT) Initiative, which coordinates the efforts of OJP bureaus and offices to facilitate improved communication and information sharing at all levels of government and across all disciplines of the justice system. In FY 2001, BJA worked with its federal, state, and local partners through the initiative to pursue projects in five strategic areas: leadership and guidance, infrastructure and governance, standards, privacy and information quality, and architecture
(http://it.ojp.gov).

Other important initiatives BJA supported to facilitate information sharing in the justice system included the Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS), a network of regional centers that share intelligence on criminal organizations operating across jurisdictional lines, and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), which provides a national support system for agencies in their fight against cybercrime and economic crime. RISS serves more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Canadian provinces. NW3C member agencies cited the center’s resources as a key factor in cases that resulted in more than 90 arrests and indictments, $555 million in criminal restitution, and 310 months in criminal sentences.

Easing the Paperwork Burden

BJA continues to use the Internet to revolutionize how we work with state and local grant recipients. BJA’s electronic grant application and award systems, including those for the LLEBG, SCAAP, and Bulletproof Vest Partnership programs, have dramatically reduced the paperwork burden on grantees and BJA’s staff. Applications for the SCAAP program, for example, can now be completed in less than 20 minutes.

Internet technology has also enhanced BJA’s ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on how jurisdictions spend their funds and improved BJA’s outreach to potentially eligible jurisdictions. Technology is helping BJA grant managers spend less time moving paperwork and more time helping states and local communities develop strategies to address pressing crime problems.