Letter from Acting BJA Director Jim Burch

On February 19, Acting BJA Director Jim Burch sent the following letter to all SAAs encouraging them to attend the 2010 Regional Workshops on Evidence Based Policy and Practice. In the letter, he indicated BJA believes that participation in these regional meetings is an appropriate use of JAG administrative funds in the states.

SAA Partners: 

As we approach the fiscal year (FY) 2010 grant application season, I wanted to share with you information about new OJP and BJA priorities that I know many of you share and information about upcoming training and technical assistance resources related to these priorities and designed to assist us in partnering together in these areas.  In recent years, BJA has encouraged states to create strategic plans to guide the use of state and federal justice funding, including Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) funding.  The FY 2009 Recovery Act State JAG solicitation noted: 

“States are strongly encouraged to prioritize evidence-based or evidence-generating practices because such practices are proven or may be effective and may be replicable.

States are also strongly encouraged to conform Recovery Act spending to their existing statewide strategic plan.  If such a plan does not now exist, states are strongly encouraged to develop and undertake, as soon as practicable, a strategic planning process using a community-based engagement model, in order to guide spending under this and future fiscal year allocations.”

I believe that many of us share the priorities of replicating evidence-based strategies and strategic planning in support of statewide justice funding. To this end, we expect to include similar language in the 2010 State JAG solicitation.  The FY 2010 State JAG solicitation will ask each SAA to provide a description of the agency’s strategic planning process, how local communities are engaged in the process, and the data and analysis utilized to support the plan.  If such a process does not now exist, we would request that the state’s plan and timeline for developing such a process be provided.

To support SAAs as they strengthen strategic planning efforts and efforts to encourage and support evidence-based practices, BJA is excited to announce new resources.  

First, using JAG funding, BJA has partnered with the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA) to establish a robust, multi-year program to assist states (SAA’s) in planning and building new evidence based approaches.  Second, BJA and NCJA will be sponsoring four regional training workshops this Spring to help SAAs and their partners enhance strategic planning efforts and to implement evidence based practices and policies.   The 2010 Regional Workshops on Evidence Based Policy and Practice are designed to give you concrete ideas for enhancing strategic planning, using data to enhance program design and implementation, and assessing and evaluating JAG investments.  

We encourage you to send a team of up to five members to benefit from this no-cost training designed exclusively for state administering agencies.  We recognize that travel dollars are tight but strongly encourage you to participate in these meetings, in order to provide you with critical resources and to enhance your 2010 JAG application.  Obviously, we believe that participation in these events is an appropriate use of JAG administrative funds in the states, but we leave that decision up to you. For more information about registration, please see the NCJA website.

Midwest Region: March 17–18, Minneapolis, MN
West Region: April 7–8, Phoenix, AZ
South Region: April 28–29, Columbia, SC
Northeast Region: May 26–27, Philadelphia, PA

In addition to these workshops, we encourage you to consider engaging NCJA and the available resources to establish model statewide planning efforts.  We look forward to sharing these success stories very soon with many interested stakeholders including Congressional staff and Administration officials who have expressed interest in statewide justice planning and evidence-based programming. (Bolding was added by NCJA for emphasis)

We look forward to supporting your efforts this year and to continuing our strong partnership for the improvement of justice.

Sincerely,
Jim Burch