NIJ FY24 Research and Evaluation on the Administration of Justice: Prosecution Practice, Justice, Case Tracking, and Workforce | O NIJ 2024 171995

Opportunity Information: Apply for O NIJ 2024 171995

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is offering a FY2024 discretionary research and evaluation grant opportunity titled "NIJ FY24 Research and Evaluation on the Administration of Justice: Prosecution Practice, Justice, Case Tracking, and Workforce" (Funding Opportunity Number: O-NIJ-2024-171995; CFDA: 16.560). The program is designed to support rigorous, evidence-based research and evaluation projects that look closely at how courts and other criminal justice tools, practices, and policies affect the day-to-day administration of justice and public safety outcomes. The focus is explicitly on state, local, and tribal jurisdictions, with an emphasis on prosecution-related decisions and processes such as charging, case flow, case outcomes, and other core prosecution functions that shape what happens from case initiation through disposition.

The solicitation concentrates on four interconnected research priorities. First, it seeks projects that advance prosecution practice and resource management, meaning studies that examine how prosecutorial offices organize work, allocate staff and funding, use specialized units, adopt new technologies, or manage caseloads and backlogs, and how those operational choices influence efficiency, timeliness, and outcomes. Second, NIJ is prioritizing research that promotes fair prosecution and the impartial administration of justice, which typically includes evaluating policies and practices that may reduce bias or disparities, strengthen consistency and transparency in decision-making, and improve legitimacy and trust. This could involve examining how charging decisions, diversion eligibility, plea bargaining practices, or risk and needs tools are used in practice and whether they produce equitable results across race, ethnicity, gender, geography, income, or other relevant characteristics.

Third, NIJ is looking to fund work that builds prosecution data resources, research capacity, and transparency. This priority reflects a practical need in many jurisdictions: prosecution and court data can be fragmented across agencies, difficult to link across systems, or inconsistent in definitions and quality. Projects under this area may focus on developing improved data infrastructure, establishing common data standards, improving case tracking from arrest through prosecution and court processing, and building the ability of agencies to use data for performance measurement, evaluation, and public reporting. The intent is not just to create datasets, but to strengthen a jurisdiction's capacity to learn from its own information and to make prosecution-related operations more visible, accountable, and analytically usable over time.

Fourth, the solicitation highlights the prosecution workforce and the broader court workgroup. This includes the people and roles involved in moving cases through the justice system: prosecutors, supervisors, investigators, victim-witness staff, data analysts, as well as the wider network that interacts with prosecution in court settings (for example, courts, defense, pretrial services, law enforcement, and service providers). Research topics here can include recruitment and retention, training and professional development, workload and burnout, organizational culture, collaboration across agencies, and how workforce conditions affect performance, decision quality, morale, and ultimately case outcomes and public safety. By framing this as both "prosecution workforce" and "court workgroup," NIJ is signaling interest in studies that recognize prosecution does not operate in isolation and that system performance often depends on coordination among multiple actors.

Awards are expected to be made as cooperative agreements, which generally means NIJ anticipates a more active role in the project through ongoing engagement, milestones, and collaboration compared to a standard grant. The award ceiling is $2,000,000, and NIJ expects to make approximately three awards under this solicitation, making it a competitive opportunity aimed at well-scoped, methodologically strong projects with clear practical relevance. The original application closing date was May 8, 2024, and the solicitation was created on February 22, 2024.

Eligibility is broad and includes state governments, county governments, cities or townships, special district governments, public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, federally recognized tribal governments, other tribal organizations, public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education), for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), and small businesses, as well as other eligible entities identified by NIJ. The solicitation also notes units of local government as a key target audience, consistent with the program's practical focus on real-world prosecution and court administration challenges.

In practical terms, NIJ is looking for projects that can credibly answer "what works, for whom, under what conditions" in prosecution and case processing, and that can translate findings into improvements in justice administration. Strong proposals would typically be expected to use rigorous research designs (such as quasi-experimental methods, randomized trials where feasible, robust mixed-methods approaches, or high-quality implementation and process evaluations), clearly define outcomes related to charging decisions, case progression, dispositions, compliance, recidivism or public safety measures where appropriate, and address how data will be collected, linked, governed, and protected. The overall goal is to generate actionable evidence that helps jurisdictions manage resources effectively, improve fairness and legitimacy, strengthen data and transparency, and build a sustainable prosecution and court workforce capable of delivering consistent and impartial justice.

• The National Institute of Justice in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "NIJ FY24 Research and Evaluation on the Administration of Justice: Prosecution Practice, Justice, Case Tracking, and Workforce" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.560.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-02-22.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-05-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 3 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

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