State Administering Agencies (SAAs) play a pivotal role in developing and implementing state and local criminal justice policy. SAAs conduct strategic planning, administer federal and state grants, and evaluate program effectiveness. In total, SAAs manage over $1.2 billion annually in federal grants, including the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, Violence Against Women Act STOP, Residential Substance Abuse Treatment, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and Victims of Crime Act funds.
Sustainability is a challenge for criminal justice reforms. Too many programs operate in silos. Local governments adopt practices supported by federal or foundation money, but do not always share lessons learned with other localities or involve the SAA or state legislature to help ensure continued funding after the initial grant ends.
In their role as state policymaker and convener, SAAs provide a range of training and technical assistance to local criminal justice agencies and other practitioners. This assistance frequently consists of in-person and online training seminars in evidence-based practices as well as grants management. A number of SAAs have developed resources to support the implementation of EBPs by their sub-recipients, including:
• Colorado’s Evidence Based Practices Implementation for Capacity
• Ohio’s Consortium of Crime Science
• Illinois’ Adult Redeploy
• Oregon’s Knowledge Bank
• Arizona’s Prescription Drug Misuse and Abuse Initiative
• Pennsylvania’s County Criminal Justice Advisory Boards and Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Center of Excellence
The goals of this focus group are to:
1. Identify effective strategies of engaging local criminal justice agencies in implementing evidence- based programs through state level resources, and
2. Discern how best to engage SAAs as peer mentors to other SAAs interested in replicating these resources.
NCJP’s grant requires:
1. NCJP to document the development and operations of at least four state-level resources providing assistance local criminal justice agencies;
2. Through a Statement of Interest process, identify up to five SAAs interested in replicating state level resources for local criminal justice agencies (regionally, if appropriate); and
3. Facilitate, monitor and document peer-to peer assistance by matching SAAs interested in resource implementation with SAAs who have implemented similar state level resources.
Please check the box next to the following questions if the answer is 'yes'.
This is one of two Focus Groups for SAAs on promising programs and implementation. The second was held during the NCJA Advisory Council meeting at the 2017 National Forum on July 30, 2017.
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Thirteen SAAs participated in this focus group. A larger focus group will be held on July 30, 2017. Although the report that was produced from the focus group (and attached to this deliverable) has not been shared externally, we actively promote as part of a From Policy to Practice video series, posted to the NCJA Center for Justice Planning website (http://www.ncjp.org/from-policy-to-practice). To date, these videos have received more than 100 views. Moreover, the lessons learned from this focus group, as well as lessons that may be gleaned from the second focus group, will further be used to inform the agenda for an Institute for CJPAs and SAAs, to be held in mid-October and jointly hosted by the National Criminal Justice Association and the National Governors Association.
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