On December 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the opening of the Fiscal Year 2022 Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) period.  Funding under this initiative is available to assist American Indian and Alaska Native communities in the areas of crime prevention, victim services, and coordinated community responses to violence against Native American women.  The solicitation contains details about available grants and describes how federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments and tribal consortia can apply for funding. 

Hosted by the Center for Victim Research, this webinar will discuss the scope of human trafficking and the challenges of measuring the prevalence of human trafficking.  This presentation will provide a brief overview of the strategies used to measure the prevalence of human trafficking, the importance of the engagement of community-based agency participation in this work, and a discussion of the benefits of taking a researcher-practitioner approach to prevalence research.  The presenters for this presentation are currently collaborating on a study to measure the prevalence of sex trafficking among adults in Sacramento County, California.

When:  Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Time:  1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., ET

Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the National Crime Gun Intelligence Center Initiative supports local multidisciplinary teams in their efforts to prevent violent crime by identifying perpetrators, linking criminal activities, and identifying sources of crime guns for immediate disruption, investigation, and prosecution.  These efforts and others are all components of Crime Gun Intelligence Centers (CGICs), an innovative and collaborative concept developed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).  CGICs are an interagency collaboration focused on the immediate collection, management, and analysis of crime gun evidence, such as shell casings, in real time, in an effort to identify shooters, disrupt criminal activity, and prevent future violence.  CGICs rely on an ongoing collaboration among ATF, the local police department, the local crime laboratory, probation and parole, local police gang units, prosecuting attorneys, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, crime analysts, community groups, and academic organizations.  BJA has awarded funding to 32 cities that proposed to replicate the ATF Governing Board’s CGIC best practices in their jurisdictions.

Published by the United States Sentencing Commission, this report presents the sentencing data for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021.  The data reveals a decline in sentencings and a historic shift in the makeup of the federal drug caseload. Key findings include: 

• The federal courts sentenced 56,619 offenders in FY2021—a sentencing caseload that has decreased by nearly 20,000 cases since FY2019.  This decrease is largely attributable to the immigration caseload.
• Methamphetamine continues to be the most common drug type in the federal system and a steadily growing portion of the drug caseload—increasing from 31 percent in FY2016 to 48 percent in FY2021.
• Fentanyl is now the fourth most common drug type in the federal system—surpassing crack cocaine and marijuana.
• Eighty-nine percent of federal offenders were sentenced to a “prison only” sentence.
   

Published by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), this research brief uses dates from an ongoing project to expand the PIRUS database with supplemental information on the military backgrounds of U.S. extremists.  This brief provides data on the rates of military service among U.S. extremists, as well as their branch, ideological, and extremist group affiliations.  The brief also provides a closer look at the individuals with military backgrounds who have been charged with taking part in the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021.  Future stages of this project will analyze the effects of combat deployment on the radicalization of U.S. extremists and provide a closer look at specific radicalization risk factors, including online recruitment, mental health concerns, and substance use disorders.