The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP) awarded fiscal year 2020 grants totaling more than $340 million to help fight the addiction crisis. The funding is through four OJP components: the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

Through BJA, OJP made the following awards:

• More than $147 million under BJA’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant and Substance Abuse Site-based Program will help prosecutors develop strategies to address violent crime caused by illegal opioid distribution and abuse.
• More than $57 million will fund BJA’s Adult Drug Court and Veterans Treatment Court Discretionary Grant Program, which helps states, state courts, local courts, and federally recognized tribal governments implement and enhance the operations of adult drug courts and veteran treatment courts. BJA also awarded more than $12 million for related training and technical assistance.
• BJA awarded more than $28 million to fund the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, which enhances the capacity of regulatory and law enforcement agencies and public health officials to collect and analyze controlled substance prescription data and other scheduled chemical products through a centralized database administered by an authorized agency.
• BJA awarded $28 million to support the Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for State Prisoners Program, which helps states develop and implement residential substance abuse treatment programs within state and local correctional facilities, as well as detention facilities, in which inmates are incarcerated for a time sufficient to permit substance abuse treatment.
• BJA awarded $2.6 million to fund the National Community Courts Site-based and Training and Technical Assistance Initiative, which helps community court grantees and practitioners develop effective responses to low-level and non-violent offenses.

Through OJJDP, OJP made the following awards:

• More than $5 million will support OJJDP’s Juvenile Drug Treatment Court Program, designed to help jurisdictions that want to establish or enhance a juvenile drug treatment court and to improve court system operations and treatment services.
• OJJDP awarded $14 million under two categories of its Mentoring Opportunities for Youth Initiative to address opioid and other substance abuse.
• Just over $4 million was awarded to support youth mentoring organizations that have a partnership with a public or private substance abuse treatment agency to provide mentoring services for youth impacted by unlawful or addictive opioid use.
• Nearly $10 million was awarded to build mentoring program capacity in targeted regions throughout the country to support statewide or regional approaches to expanding mentoring services for youth impacted by opioids.
• Nearly $9 million will fund OJJDP’s Opioid Affected Youth Initiative, which will support states, communities, tribes and nonprofits implementing programs and strategies that identify, respond to, treat and support children, youth and families impacted by the opioid epidemic.
• Another $1 million will fund specialized training to serve families impacted by opioids as part of a larger award under OJJDP’s Child Abuse Training for Judicial and Court Personnel.

Through OVC, OJP made the following awards:

• More than $12 million under the Enhancing Community Responses to America’s Drug Crisis: Serving Our Youngest Crime Victims Program to support direct services to children and youth who are crime victims as a result of the nation’s addiction crisis.
• Nearly $1.5 million to support training and technical assistance for the direct services grantees.

Through NIJ, OJP made the following awards:

• Nearly $1.5 million on Research and Evaluation on Drugs and Crime, which will support rigorous applied research on evidence-based tools, protocols and policy efforts that will address drug traffickers, markets, and related violence.
• Over $2.3 million for other related research.

The list of awards by state is posted at https://www.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh241/files/media/document/opioidsfactsheet.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery and more information about each is posted at https://www.ojp.gov/funding/explore/ojp-award-data (accessed October 29, 2020).

This was reported by the Department of Justice on October 16, 2020.

Contact information: Kara McCarthy, Public Affairs Specialist, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, Department of Justice, 810 7th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20531; 202-307-1241; Email: kara.mccarthy@usdoj.gov; Website: https://www.ojp.gov/.