With $2.7 billion, OJP's fiscal year 1996 budget was larger than at any time in its history. This enabled OJP to fund 15 new or expanded Crime Act Programs, including the Bureau of Justice Assistance's new Local Law Enforcement Block Grants, the greatly expanded Violence Against Women Grants program, and the new prison construction and drug treatment in prisons programs. Through the National Institute of Justice, OJP solicited millions of dollars of new research using Crime Act authorized dollars in such areas as sentencing, corrections, community policing, and family violence. OJP hired and trained over 150 new employees to implement these new initiatives and to ensure that the grant programs would be administered as quickly and efficiently as possible. OJP is implementing further changes in the way grants are processed by adopting the most advanced technology available and streamlining the reviews undertaken. OJP has also taken on some new difficult issues, such as how to better manage sex offenders in the community; how to better respond to youth violence from both enforcement and early intervention perspectives; how to use the coercive intervention of the criminal justice system to stop recurring criminal behaviors; and how to help Federal, State, and local government rethink how to deliver justice in this Nation.