Sneak Preview: Data Limitations To Be Explained for OJP Programs
(The following was excerpted from a Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) The Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs (OJP) will now include a specific statement in published documents providing performance data about post-prison rehabilitation grant program results that clearly identifies limitations to any conclusions that can be drawn from the data, in response to a recommendation in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
More than 600,000 individuals were released from U.S. prisons in federal fiscal year (FY) 2019 after serving their sentences, according to the report. OJP awarded 144 grants totaling $1.36 million in FY 2019 and 2020 to organizations to assist these individuals in obtaining jobs, housing and mental health treatment, among other services. These grant funds were authorized under the Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2018 (Pub. L. 115-391), which reauthorized the Second Chance Act of 2007 (Pub. L. 110-199) and enables the U.S. attorney general to provide prison rehabilitation grants from FY 2019 to FY 2023 to assist former prisoners in their reentry into the community. The act also includes a provision requiring GAO to review grant programs covered under the act.
Among the 12 programs authorized under the Second Chance Act are the Comprehensive Community-based Mentoring and Transitional Service Grants to Nonprofit Organizations program; the Children of Incarcerated Parents program; and the Offender Reentry Substance Abuse and Criminal Justice Collaboration program. These programs are overseen by OJP through its three components — the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Since December 2021, OJP has sought to determine the effectiveness of its Second Chance Act grant programs in two ways. First, NIJ has been collaborating with an outside firm to analyze the extent to which three selected Second Chance Act programs improve rehabilitation outcomes (e.g., employment, education, housing) compared to individuals not participating in the programs. NIJ noted that if the studies are completed as planned, “the methodology may allow [the agency] to say with confidence whether the activities of the selected grantees had measurable effects on participant recidivism and potentially other outcomes of interest” (see ¶469 in the Federal Grants Management Module about program outcomes).
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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