The FY 2021 Federal Grant Season is well underway with numerous open solicitations available. Make sure to visit SJI’s Funding Toolkit for the latest grant information. The Toolkit includes current grant solicitations, along with templates that can be used to prepare a grant application.
As a reminder, applicants for DOJ/Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) grants should be aware there is a new process this year that includes both grants.gov and JustGrants. Make sure you are aware of the deadlines and separate requirements to ensure your application is accepted.
The Toolkit also includes FAQs about the grant making process, along with an answer from a grant expert. Follow SJI on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest FAQ and funding announcements. Send your funding and grant questions to fundingtoolkit@sji.gov. Experts will provide answers, as well as references to additional resources.
SJI continues to addresses the impact of federal and state human trafficking laws on the state courts, and the challenges faced by state courts in dealing with cases involving trafficking victims and their families. These efforts are intended to empower state courts to identify victims, link them with vital services, and hold traffickers accountable. Several new resources are now available:
The National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project (NIWAP) at the American University/Washington College of Law, working in partnership with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) is launching a National Judicial Network: Forum on Human Trafficking and Immigration in State Courts (“The Network”). The Network will provide a forum for judges to: engage in peer-to-peer learning sessions with judges from across the country; participate in webinars; communicate with other judges in a member-only confidential Listserv; access topic-specific publications; and attend future in-person trainings on issues that arise in state courts involving human trafficking and immigrant victims.
The U.S. Department of Justice/Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) continues to provide resources that can help organizations and programs increase identification of, and enhance service delivery to, survivors of human trafficking:
The Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center helps organizations and tribes start, sustain, or expand their anti-trafficking work. Visit the new website for more information about the Center, its services, and a wealth of downloadable anti-trafficking resources.
The Development and Operations Roadmap for Multidisciplinary Anti-Human Trafficking Task Forces publication, produced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police with funding from OVC and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, provides new and experienced anti-human trafficking task forces with guidance to assess and plan task force development from start to sustainability.
The Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC TTAC) recently released the Human Trafficking Action Research Toolkit. The toolkit provides information, strategies, tools, and other resources to help organizations and programs understand and conduct action research.
The Understanding Human Trafficking training, another resource offered by OVC TTAC, provides foundational learning on trauma-informed and victim-centered approaches to human trafficking through five interactive online modules designed so that a wide audience can benefit.
For more information and resources on anti-human trafficking efforts, please visit the Human Trafficking section of OVC’s website.
The Network will provide a forum for judges to engage in peer-to-peer learning sessions with judges from across the country, participate in webinars, communicate with other judges in a member-only confidential Listserv, access topic-specific publications, and attend future in-person trainings on issues that arise in state courts involving human trafficking and immigrant victims. The Network Forums are intended to help judges learn more about these complicated issues and, consequently, improve access to justice for human trafficking and immigrant victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and other crimes.
NIWAP is inviting judges to join bi-monthly, peer-to-peer virtual learning sessions on the first Tuesday of every other month from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST. Each session will be led by a judicial facilitator, with topics set in advance by The Network’s steering committee. The first peer-to-peer session will be March 2, 2021, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST. During the first session, NIWAP will discuss the purpose of The Network, one of whose objectives is to identify best practices and tools that NIWAP can develop under its SJI grant. You will hear from experienced judges about the goals of The Network, including the development of live webinar trainings, which can be uploaded and shared with your local jurisdiction. As a member of The Network, you will be invited to participate in a Network members-only confidential Listserv through which you can communicate with other judges about human trafficking and immigration law issues that arise in your court or other state court cases.
Registrants will receive regular updates and registration information for peer-to-peer sessions, the confidential Listserv, and webinars/trainings.
NIWAP also has a current SJI grant is titled, Human Trafficking Victims: Developing Training and Tools for Courts. Under this grant, NIWAP is developing materials on human trafficking, providing technical assistance, and offering pilot trainings for state court judges and judicial employees on human trafficking and the T Visa. To view current deliverables under this grant, please use this link:
In September of 2018, Utah became one of the first states to initiate an ODR pilot effort to aid in the processing of small claims cases effectively and efficiently. Often litigants are self-represented, and the dockets fill quickly – lending these case types to benefit greatly from streamlined and procedural improvements made possible through technology.
The report, titled Impact of the Utah Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Pilot Program, provides a thorough evaluation of Utah Courts’ in-house, customized ODR system, the procedural requirements for ODR, and impact of their system. In the recommendations, the consultant advises the Courts to review the findings of the 2020 University of Arizona’s usability study, to help guide improvements to the current ODR platform in advance of statewide deployment.
Ultimately, both reports acknowledge that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, court users were both receptive and ready for online solutions. With COVID-19, the national trend finds jurisdictions embracing remote courts as a way of creating fair, just, and equitable online legal environments that meet the needs of all users.
Adoption of Virtual Services in Judicially Led Diversion Programs: Preliminary Survey Findings is the first nationwide exploration of virtual services in judicially led diversion programs. Since March 2020, public health measures designed to slow community spread of COVID-19, necessitated that practitioners in judicially led diversion programs quickly deliver services virtually to facilitate what had traditionally been in-person interactions.
Released this month, the 43-page report highlights preliminary survey findings based on 500 respondents involved in judicially led diversion programs. The survey respondents represent 298 unique judicially led diversion programs in forty states and territories and reflect the perspectives of practitioners from court operations, treatment and recovery support, and community supervision in November and December 2020.
The SJI Funding Toolkit provides support to local courts, state courts, and their justice system partners pursue federal and philanthropic funding opportunities.
Coined by Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack (MI), the expression “not the disruption we wanted, but the disruption we needed” captures the ongoing impact the pandemic has had on America’s state courts.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Conference of Chief Justices/Conference of State Court Administrators Rapid Response Team (RRT) and the NCSC have worked to identify and develop innovations and new practices in response to the pandemic. To help spread innovation widely and to continue to learn from sites implementing new practices, the RRT and NCSC are launching the 2021 Implementation Lab. Applications are welcome from courts that would like to participate.
The goal of the Implementation Lab is to foster sustainable innovations across a large, diverse group of courts throughout the United States, to continue to learn about the impact of these innovations, and to share lessons learned throughout the process.
Applications are open to join the Lab in one of these areas of innovation:
Pre-Trial Practices
Remote and Virtual Hearings
Remote Workforce
Digital Divide
Online Dispute Resolution
Virtual Jury Selection and Jury Trials
Self-Represented Litigants
Language Access Technology
High-Volume Dockets
Eviction Diversion
Case Management
For the duration of the project, anticipated to run through 2021, NCSC and the RRT will provide resources and technical assistance to the selected sites as they develop and execute implementation plans, evaluate the impact of their innovations, and work to sustain best practices. The Implementation Lab is made possible with SJI funding support. Full details and an application package are available now. Applications are due Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. A first round of selections will be made in early February.
Also, in case you missed it, resources available at www.ncsc.org/pandemic continue to grow:
With many states extending prohibitions on in-person jury trials, we have updated our map showing statewide jury restrictions (click on the “Statewide Jury Restrictions” tab).
With large urban centers sometimes enacting tougher restrictions on jury trials, we have added a new tab called “Jury Trial Restrictions By County” that focuses on the nation’s largest urban centers.
The “Virtual Hearings” tab now includes links to guides to remote hearings that have been published by state courts. Hover over a state, and if a guide is available, a link to that state’s guide will appear.
Through a Request for Applications (RFA) process launched in FY 2020, SJI funded multiple projects that will assist state courts in their response to, and recovery from, COVID-19, with a look towards the future of court operations. SJI gave priority consideration for RFA funding to projects that focused on institutionalizing and/or replicating practices that have been implemented during the pandemic.
SJI supported projects that planned a system change approach (as opposed to the replication of narrowly focused programs or projects), and emphasized the use of case triage to match cases and parties to appropriate resources and services both within and outside the courthouse. This also includes the use of technology for innovations such as online dispute resolution (ODR), portal development, virtual hearings, and other efforts to allow court business to be conducted outside of the courthouse. These projects will also take into account access and fairness, and costs/benefits, not only to the courts, but also to court users.
A summary of these projects is available on the SJI website.
The SJI Board of Directors met virtually on December 7, 2020 to make decisions on quarterly grant applications, and approved a total of ten new grants.
Two Strategic Initiatives Grants were approved in support of SJI’s Pandemic Response and Recovery Request for Applications (RFA); the Texas Office of Court Administration to assess the impact of remote hearings on judicial workload; and, the National Courts and Sciences Institute (NCSI) to provide sustainable case and evidentiary support for state court cases emanating from the pandemic. Three Project Grants were approved: the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia for an appellate e-filing project; the Franklin County, Ohio, Municipal Court for a self-help resource center project; and the National Association for Court Management (NACM) to support educational programming for court managers and judges, including the impact of the pandemic on court operations. Three Technical Assistance Grants were approved: the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts for a translation implementation project; the 5th Judicial District of Colorado for a mental health improvement initiative; and the District of Columbia Courts to assess high volume calendars. Two Curriculum Adaptation and Training Grants were approved: Lubbock County, Texas, for an educational program on mental health for mediators; and, the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ) for a National Justice and Fairness Training program.
The next deadline for grant applications is February 1, 2021 (FY 2021, 2nd Quarter).
