Prosecutors, judges, and court personnel are faced with increasing challenges to find approaches that will help them not only clear cases and decrease dockets but also focus more on tailoring services to lower recidivism. Throughout the country, we are finding that crimes that involve gun violence, mentally ill and disabled populations, and drug users require special efforts. These efforts help ensure accountability on the part of the offenders while also ensuring that offenders return to the community with the services and supervision they need to help them stop their negative behavior.
In addition, state and local prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges are facing the challenges of meeting needs with limited resources. Although the methods chosen to meet these needs are unique to local court personnel, we at BJA are committed to providing the resources, tools, and support needed to help them test their ideas.
- BJA will continue to provide technical assistance and training
to support community justice concepts.
- We will continue to fund research and technical assistance to find creative sentencing strategies and practices and assess their effectiveness.
- Through the Community Gun Violence Prosecution portion of Project
Safe Neighborhoods, BJA will continue to provide funding and
other support to prosecutors' offices that seek to improve their
abilities to prosecute gun crimes.
- We will fund and support mental health courts that seek to find appropriate alternatives to incarceration and needed services for those offenders with mental illnesses or disabilities.
- BJA will continue to support drug courts with funding formerly available through the Drug Courts Program Office.
- BJA will support the criminal defense community to ensure the
fair administration of justice and provide for indigent defense.
- In concert with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, BJA will provide support to state and local prosecutors
in developing and institutionalizing capabilities to investigate
and prosecute money laundering offenses.
- We will also continue to support high-quality judicial training.
- BJA will provide training and technical assistance programs
to assist court administrators.
Related Publications
BJA has published a monograph series that addresses key issues
that attorneys and managers in indigent defense systems face every
day.
- Contracting for Indigent Defense Services: A Special Report
PDF
or ASCII
- Improving State and Local Criminal Justice Systems: A Report
on How Public Defenders, Prosecutors, and Other Criminal Justice
System Practitioners Are Collaborating Across the Country
PDF or
ASCII
- Indigent Defense and Technology: A Progress Report PDF
or ASCII
- Keeping Defender Workloads Manageable PDF
or ASCII
The 2001
National Money Laundering Strategy
To search for more BJA publications, visit our Publications
database.
Related Web Sites
American Prosecutors Research
Institute (APRI)
Center for Court Innovation
National Association of Attorneys
General
National Association of Drug Court
Professionals
National Center for State Courts
National Defender Leadership Institute
National District Attorneys Association
National Judicial College
National Legal Aid and Defender Association
For more links, search our Related Web Sites database.
Training
BJA provides training and technical assistance support to the Community
Prosecution grantees through the American
Prosecutors Research Institute, the Community
Justice Exchange, the Crime and Justice Research Institute, and George Washington University's Institute on
Crime, Justice and Corrections.
Under the Project Safe Neighborhoods
Community Gun Violence Prosecution Program, the American
Prosecutors Research Institute provides training
for state and local prosecutors on effective gun violence reduction
strategies.
The National Judicial College
provides educational and professional development opportunities
to more than 58,000 judges worldwide. BJA-sponsored courses include
children as adults in court, bench skills for judges, health care
and aging, disabilities and co-occurring disorders, and the role
of families in the justice system.
For more information on BJA-sponsored training and technical assistance
initiatives, search our Training and Technical Assistance database.
In addition, the National Defender Leadership Institute (NDLI) provides training to strengthen defender leadership and ensure that public defense systems function efficiently and promote equal justice under the law. Training programs are scheduled on a regular basis.
