In FY 2022, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), in partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), awarded a $3 million cooperative agreement to American University (AU) to conduct the NIJ Multisite Impact and Cost-Efficiency Evaluation of Veterans Treatment Courts (NIJ Grant 15PNIJ-22-GK-00035-VTCX). This application is in response to NIJ’s FY2023 Invitation to Apply for Supplemental Funding to support multiple research activities to be determined during the Planning phase and documented in a Revised Evaluation Plan. These activities fall under three areas.
Task 1: Research Support for the Study Sites - The original award provides two years of funding to the Research Partner Sites to support their on-site and cross-site evaluation research activities. This supplement would add funding in Years 3 and 4 to ensure the sites will be able to sustain their contributions throughout the project.
Task 2: Enhance Evaluation Research Protocols – As stated in NIJ’s FY2022 solicitation, the grantee will minimally conduct a robust process, impact, and cost-efficiency evaluation. This supplement would enhance information collection and analysis on all tasks not limited to a more comprehensive process evaluation regarding the comparison group of veterans not assigned to the VTC program treatment group in the field experiment, assessing effective program implementation drivers and enabling contexts, and other enhancements to the original proposal.
Task 3: Special Studies - NIJ’s FY2022 solicitation and FY2023 Invitation to Apply encourage the grantee to collaborate with Research Partner Sites to explore additional research questions for a closer examination of certain program innovations and other aspects of service delivery. This supplement would allow smaller studies to explore topics such as: the role of personal, family/social, and community recovery capital; pretrial status and failure to appear at court hearings; and the influence of gender, VA eligibility, family responsibilities, and cultural backgrounds on program outcomes.
It is expected that beneficiaries of this study will include the selected study sites, jurisdictions operating or planning to start a VTC, other VTC programs, legislatures and policymakers, and researchers and funders who have interest in treatment courts. NCA/NCF
