Current Funding Opportunities

With this solicitation, NIJ’s seeks proposals for research projects addressing the use of technologies such as texting, mobile applications, telecommunications networks, and social networking to bully, harass, stalk or intimidate another person, including adolescents. Examples of technology facilitated abuse include cyberstalking, sextortion, non-consensual pornography, doxing, or swatting.

With this funding opportunity, NIJ seeks review and revalidate on an annual basis the risk assessment tool developed in response to the First Step Act (FSA). The risk assessment tool, the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs (PATTERN), will be implemented and used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to predict the likelihood of general and violent recidivism for all BOP inmates.

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks applications for funding for investigator-initiated, randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies of approaches to the challenges of policing in the United States that address the strategic priorities and objectives identified in NIJ’s Policing Strategic Research Plan, 2017-2022.

This solicitation seeks applications for funding to conduct research to

1. Examine the root causes of school violence.
2. Evaluate the effectiveness of the approaches to stopping school violence found in the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) FY 2018 or FY 2019 STOP School Violence Act solicitations.
3. Research on the perspectives of STOP School Violence Act solicitations.

To enhance diversity in the field of criminal justice, NIJ will support 15 American Indian and Alaska Native students to attend criminal justice-related conferences. Students will explore how their educational backgrounds apply to issues of crime and justice. They will meet researchers and practitioners engaged in similar work. Conferences will expose students to innovative and evidence-based scientific and technological solutions to justice issues.

With this solicitation, NIJ requests proposals for rigorous research to examine reentry initiatives that incorporate promising practices, strategies, or programs.  NIJ is interested in supporting evaluations of innovative reentry initiatives that focus on offenders with a moderate-to-high risk of reoffending. 

With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals for basic or applied research and development projects. An NIJ forensic science research and development grant supports a discrete, specified, circumscribed project that will: (1) increase the body of knowledge to guide and inform forensic science policy and practice, or (2) lead to the production of useful material(s), device(s), system(s), or method(s) that have the potential for forensic application.

With this solicitation, NIJ, in collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, seeks proposals for rigorous research projects that improve measurement of juvenile reoffending. NIJ encourages applicants to submit proposals for studies that advance knowledge and understanding of juvenile reoffending and aid jurisdictions and juvenile justice agencies in measuring and using juvenile reoffending data appropriately in their efforts to identify priorities, develop responses, and monitor and assess policies and programs.

With this solicitation, NIJ requests proposals for research to evaluate the effectiveness of the Second Chance Act (SCA) grant program in improving reentry and reducing recidivism. To support this effort, NIJ will fund a phased research evaluation strategy that details and measures the implementation, processes, outcomes, costs, and impacts of the grants awarded under the SCA grant program.

NIJ is seeking applications for funding to conduct an expansion or extension of one or more ongoing/existing longitudinal research studies that focus on delinquency and crime throughout the life-course of the individual. The research findings are intended to inform efforts to prevent the onset of delinquency and to intervene in the lives of juvenile and young adult offenders.

In collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), NIJ seeks proposals for funding to conduct a study of youth gangs. The award recipient will be expected to develop, test, and administer a national data collection from law enforcement agencies to produce accurate and reliable national estimates of, and information about youth gangs, and gang-related criminal activities and law enforcement approaches to dealing with those activities.

With this solicitation, NIJ aims to better understand how law enforcement practice with regard to preventing and responding to the sex trafficking of minors has evolved since passage to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. NIJ is specifically interested in understanding how widely law enforcement agencies have adopted practices that are based on the perspective that the minor is a victim as opposed to a delinquent, and the challenges that agencies have faced in adopting such practices.