IT & Software grants in United States

This program focuses on enhancing the technical capacity and efficiency of the NIBRS Estimation System, improving the timeliness of crime and arrest estimates, refining measurement methodologies and supporting state UCR program work.

1) NCHIP ($59,000,000)- This program aims to improve the nation's safety and security by enhancing the quality, completeness, and accessibility of criminal history record information; and by ensuring the nationwide implementation of criminal justice and non-criminal justice background check systems. 2) NCHIP SF BSCA ($40,000,000) - This program furthers the DOJ's mission to reduce violent crime and address gun violence by improving the accuracy, utility, and interstate accessibility of criminal-history and related records in support of national record systems and their use for name- and fingerprint-based criminal history background checks. This program was developed to implement Title III, Division B (3) - Appropriations outlined in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (Pub. L. 117-159). 3) NARIP ($24,000,000)- This program provides grants to assist states, state court systems and tribal governments in updating the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) with certain mental health, protection and restraining order, domestic violence conviction, and other criminal history record information which may disqualify individuals from purchasing or possessing firearms. BJS coordinates its work on the NICS program with the efforts of the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP) to ensure that funded state and state court system programs are complementary and consistent with the overall goal of improving the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of state and national criminal records.

The ASPP collection is BJS’s most comprehensive source of information on persons under community supervision, which accounts for the largest segment of the adult correctional population in the United States. At yearend 2023, more than two-thirds of persons under correctional supervision were supervised in the community on probation or parole (3,772,000), while almost one-third (1,852,900) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails. The ASPP collection fills a valuable role by measuring the number of persons under community supervision each year, the change in this number and factors associated with the change (such as movements onto and off community supervision), the characteristics of this population, and outcomes of supervision. Because these surveys measure the vast majority of the U.S. correctional population, the ASPP—and the Annual Probation Survey in particular—are the most complex and difficult of BJS’s annual correctional surveys. The goal of the ASPP is to accurately report on the number of individuals who are involved with correctional supervision in the community. Data are collected as a census from the known universe of probation and parole supervising agencies, using central reporters wherever possible to minimize burden on the public. The Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole collect data through the Annual Survey of Parole (CJ-7) sent to 52 agencies, the Annual Survey of Probation (CJ-8) sent to 229 central reporting agencies and those supervising at least one person on felony probation, and the Annual Survey of Probation-Misdemeanor Supervision (CJ-8M) sent to about 548 agencies supervising people on misdemeanor probation only. BJS collects data from state-level respondents in an effort to reduce burden whenever possible. The nature of the data collection presents a number of challenges, which BJS is continually working to address. These surveys collect information from both large and small agencies, which are located at various levels and branches of government and have highly diverse data record systems and resources. One challenge facing the collection is determining the quality of data when some respondents report the population as a count of supervised individuals and others report the number of cases probation or parole officers handle. BJS continuously seeks to improve the Annual Probation Survey in response to different populations. BJS anticipates making one award to cover the data collection, processing, and analysis activities for five reference years of ASPP data, 2026–2030. It is likely that this will be one award covering all five years. The project will begin October 1, 2026, and end September 30, 2031.

This program will continue to support activities under the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP), the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Act Record Improvement Program (NARIP), and portions of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (Pub. L. 117-159) in fiscal year (FY) 2024. Direct technical assistance is provided to states, territories, and tribal jurisdictions to ensure that records systems are developed and managed to conform to FBI standards, ensure jurisdictions are using the most appropriate technologies, and adhere to the highest standards of practice with respect to privacy and confidentiality. This program also routinely collects and evaluates performance measures to assess the level of improvement of state and national records holdings, as well as information sharing and exchanges. BJS has supported the NCHIP TTA program since 1995. This program furthers the DOJ’s mission to reduce violent crime and address gun violence by improving the accuracy, utility, and interstate accessibility of criminal-history and related records in support of national record systems and their use for name- and fingerprint-based criminal history background checks.

This opportunity seeks to provide support to further the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)’s mission to produce accurate and timely statistics on recidivism and criminal histories of offenders. The focus of the work is to assist BJS with converting state- and federal-specific fields in criminal history records into research datasets with standardized codes that support statistical analysis and to provide support with multiple recidivism statistics and research projects. BJS uses criminal history data collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and state record repositories to study recidivism patterns and criminal careers of various offenders, including persons on probation or discharged from prison. Each state has a central repository that maintains criminal history records within their jurisdiction and operates a system for disseminating those records. The FBI also maintains a repository from the federal justice system and U.S. territories. The repository also contains records from state, local, and tribal agencies that the FBI is responsible for disseminating. The content of these administrative records varies among FBI and state repositories and the recipient of funds will assist BJS with converting these data into datasets for statistical analysis. The recipient will also assist with multiple recidivism statistics and research projects. Prior CHRARP programs developed programs, codes, and crosswalks tables. The crosswalk tables hold BJS’s national recode of state- and federal-specific data fields found in the rap sheet datasets which provide consistent data coding across studies and reduce the time and effort to standardize a subsequent parsed dataset when the text fields (e.g., offense and court descriptions) in the criminal history data match the same text fields encountered in datasets from previous studies. The 2026 CHRARP will continue building upon the work of the prior CHRARP programs (CCHRRD, and the 2015 and 2020 CHRARPs) by refining state crosswalks, increasing accuracy of codes to process the criminal history records, and data analysis. Information about these prior programs is available in the full funding opportunity description. The 2026 CHRARP will thoroughly examine the content and attributes of the criminal history data, identifying and documenting differences in the composition of the arrest, prosecution, court, and supervision information within and across jurisdictions. The recipient will work with BJS to identify potential data quality issues and obtain feedback from federal, state, and tribal agencies as needed about these issues. The recipient will develop methods to successfully transform 100% of the data fields found in the parsed rap sheet datasets into BJS’s standardized values and work with BJS to identify existing offense classification tables from state and federal agencies and prior CHRARP projects that could assist with the standardization tasks for this project. Applicants are encouraged to propose cost-efficient methods and innovative solutions to convert state- and federal-specific data fields into a uniform coding structure and account for variations in administrative records when analyzing multistate data.

This is a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the OVC FY 2026 Preventing Trafficking of Girls. This opportunity will support prevention and early intervention services for girls who are at risk of, or are victims of, human trafficking as defined by 22 U.S.C. § 7102(11).