The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) National Training and Technical Assistance Center (NTTAC) offers training and technical assistance (TTA) to law enforcement agencies to enhance their capabilities.  The BJA NTTAC supports a wide range of TTA for state, local, tribal, or territorial criminal justice agencies under the Crime Analysis on Demand TTA program.  Examples of this support can be found in the fact sheet below. 

According to provisional counts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses—including illicit drugs and prescription opioids—killed more than 72,000 Americans in 2017, a two-fold increase in ten years.

Responding to this epidemic is one of the U.S. Department of Justice’s top priorities.  The Bureau of Justice Assistance’s (BJA) Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program (COAP) aims to reduce opioid abuse and the number of overdose fatalities, as well as mitigate the impacts on crime victims by supporting comprehensive, collaborative initiatives.  To help jurisdictions design and implement their COAP program, BJA launched the COAP Resource Center.  The materials in the COAP Resource Center support effective state, local, tribal, and territorial responses to the opioid epidemic.

The National Criminal Justice Association recently launched the new Library of Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) Promising Practices.  This searchable library highlights Byrne JAG-funded programs across the country and allows users to showcase promising practices, generate new ideas, and potentially replicate successful programs.

The library contains over 200 calendar-year 2016 program examples from all 50 states and Washington, DC, to demonstrate how Byrne JAG dollars are being invested throughout the nation.  Users can browse the entire library, search by keyword, or filter entries by state, purpose area, or 22 different project types.

Laws governing how and when police body-worn cameras can be used and whether the footage is released vary considerably across the country. The Urban Institute has developed a legislation tracker to find out more about passed and pending state legislation.  Recently, the Urban Institute updated the tracker and published an article on five new trends in state body-worn camera legislation:

• States are developing evidence-based model policies and standards.
• There’s no nationwide standard on when footage is considered public record.
• Privacy issues continue to surface.
• State guidelines regarding officer viewings of body camera footage before investigations are rare but needed.

• It’s not just about state legislation (but also includes local agencies’ policies and processes).

The National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), which is administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, provides funding through a competitive grant program to support the jurisdictional reform of approaches to sexual assault cases resulting from evidence found in sexual assault kits (SAKs) that have never been submitted to a crime laboratory. SAKI aims to create a coordinated community response that ensures just resolution to sexual assault cases by assisting jurisdictions in establishing sustainable change in practices, protocols, and policies as they relate to untested SAKs and sexual assault response.