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While in Louisiana in September, CJI also met with DPS&C Secretary LeBlanc and members of his staff to discuss reinvestment of money saved through JRI. The new laws split reinvestment money into four pots, and DPS&C is responsible for allocating two of those: first, DPS&C must establish grants to go to community recidivism prevention efforts, and second, DPS&C will get funds to reinvestment in internal structures. During the meeting with the Secretary and his staff, CJI helped the group talk through their initial thoughts for both methods. This will continue to be an area of focus going forward, especially as DPS&C has never distributed grants before and will need help creating a system to do so.

In September, CJI helped this group (made up of DOC Secretary LeBlanc and members of his staff) begin to develop an initial plan. DOC left the meeting with several to-dos, but at the meeting in October, it became clear that not much progress had been made on those to-dos yet. CJI helped facilitate some conversations at this meeting necessary to move forward on those action items, and will continue to help ensure decisions about reinvestment funds are a priority for DOC.

One area of concern within reinvestment for DOC is a provision of the bill which requires DOC to establish and run a community grants system. Several local foundations have offered to assist DOC in this area, as DOC hasn’t run a grants system before. DOC would like this help, but has been slow to take steps to cement this plan. This month, CJI was particularly focused on moving this partnership along.

In July 2018 the Governor’s office made a final announcement of the first year’s savings: $12.2 million has been saved from the JRI changes, double the original savings projection from Phase I. This is exciting news for the state and means each reinvestment agency will have more money to invest than anticipated.

CJI has been helping facilitate a relationship between DOC and outside funders who have offered to provide guidance in setting up a grants system, issuing RFPs, evaluating proposals, and monitoring grant recipients. A meeting between these funders and DOC has been convened for January, so this month CJI helped DOC prepare for the meeting. CJI created an agenda for the meeting, prepared an email to funder outlining DOC’s specific needs, and helped DOC create a draft RFP.

DOC has also been struggling with communicating implementation efforts to other JRI partners. As many outside partners are particularly concerned with the implementation efforts around reinvestment, CJI created a Reinvestment Overview which addresses many of the questions CJI and DOC have been getting about reinvestment efforts (see attached).

In January, DOC presented the RFP (created by DOC and CJI) to a group of these area non-profit foundations for feedback. In February, CJI incorporated the edits from this meeting. Throughout the spring, CJI continued to work with DOC on the RFP.

In May, at the request of advocacy group Smart on Crime Louisiana, CJI joined them for a briefing on the reinvestment process with an interested New Orleans city councilor (who is also a former legislator).

In June, the RFP was approved by Louisiana's Office of State Procurement and posted to the public.

In addition to managing the current grants, DOC is in the process of beginning the next grant year cycle. CJI has participated in internal DOC discussions on ways to improve this process based on lessons learned last year, and helped DOC create a strong RFP for the next cycle. DOC is getting ready to release the RFP for the second grant cycle soon.

In June, CJI helped DOC being to develop internal structures that will need to be established to monitor the grant.

CJI has been helping DOC think through the internal structures DOC needs to establish to manage the grants program. In July 2018, CJI met with DOC about their progress on setting up an internal plan for reviewing, distributing, and monitoring the grant. CJI will continue to help facilitate relationships among different divisions within DOC to move these internal plans along as the grants process begins.

In September 2018, a scoring committee reviewed and scored the proposals. CJI was not on the scoring committee, but has kept in close contact with DOC throughout this process as they work to decide scoring metrics, a plan for the distribution of grant funds, and strategies for monitoring the use of the funds once they have been awarded.

In October, the Governor’s office officially announced the recipients of the DOC-administered community incentive grants. Media coverage of the announcement has been positive, with a focus on the good work that will be done in the community with the reinvestment money. The next step is for DOC to distribute and monitor the funds. CJI continues to support DOC throughout the grant process, especially as DOC plans for quality assurance procedures to ensure grantees are following through with their contracts and are being good stewards of the grant funds.

In November 2018, DOC created contracts for the dispersal of the funds to the winners. CJI continues to support DOC as they work to create an internal plan for monitoring this grant. DOC is considering hiring a staff person to help monitor and administer the grant program. This position would likely also establish quality assurance procedures to ensure grantees are following through with their contracts.

In December 2018, DOC finalized contracts for the dispersal of the funds to the grantees. CJI supported DOC as they considered what performance metrics to require from each site, and how to monitor the grants. These will likely be ongoing discussions, and CJI will continue to support DOC as they create internal plans for monitoring and performance metric collection. DOC has hired a staff person to help with these tasks, which CJI was glad to see, as monitoring the grants will be time consuming.

CJI continues to check in regularly with DOC staff working on this project to help them think about the lessons learned throughout this first year of the grant program. We want to encourage them to think about what changes should be implemented to make the next grant cycle run more efficiently.

From January to June 2019, CJI continued to help DOC create internal plans for monitoring grant recipients and collecting performance metrics. Early this year, DOC had meetings with each grant recipient to review the contracts and discuss performance metrics, and finalized contracts. There are two main departments involved in both processes, and, on a visit in February CJI picked up on confusion from all sides over what everyone’s role is. On our next visit, CJI facilitated a meeting between these parties to define roles and clarify some miscommunications. The meeting seems to have cleared up a lot of confusion and opened up some good communication pathways between the two departments involved in managing the grants. CJI also made arrangements for some DOC staff involved in this process to attend a UCCI training on fidelity to help them prepare to monitor programs associated with the grants.

In July 2019, DOC released the RFP for the next round of funding. They received a few more proposals than last year. DOC reviewed and scored applications in August and September 2019. DOC has asked for CJI’s assistance to create a plan to evaluate grantees and their services, so we have created an evaluation form to use when assessing quality assurance measures. DOC finished reviewing and scoring applications in October. In November, CJI met with DOC to check in on their grant monitoring process. This responsibility recently switched from one internal department to another, so the new heads of this activity are working to figure out the best way to manage the grants. CJI is going to work with them to develop a monitoring form and policies to use with the grant recipients.

CJI has been working with the department in charge of monitoring the Community Incentive Grants to develop a system to monitor the work of the grant recipients. In January 2020, CJI worked with DOC to develop an action plan laying out the steps that need to be taken to report on the work of grant recipients for the annual performance report. Included in this action plan, is developing a set of uniform performance measures across all programs that received reinvestment funding. CJI also worked with this department to establish a standard system to track participants across all programs and track individual outcomes. In March, CJI met with the department to finalize the pilot of the monitoring process. In April, the department began rolling out the monitoring process. CJI also helped create a training for providers explaining the new system which was held in June. CJI will help DOC make any further tweaks to the system if providers have feedback now that the system is fully rolled out

In the Summer of 2020 and to prepare for close out, CJI created a sustainability plan for the DOC department responsible for reinvestment. CJI also worked with DOC to create a data dashboard for grantees under the CIG program, which was rolled out in September. This will also the CIG program staff to evaluate the impact of grantees in the years to come.