NIJ FY22 Research and Evaluation for the Testing and Interpretation of Physical Evidence in Publicly Funded Forensic Laboratories

OJP is committed to advancing work that promotes civil rights and racial equity, increases access to justice, supports crime victims and individuals impacted by the justice system, strengthens community safety and protects the public from crime and evolving threats, and builds trust between law enforcement and the community. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is authorized to conduct or authorize multiyear and short-term research and development concerning the criminal justice system and related aspects of the civil justice systems. With this solicitation, NIJ seeks proposals for rigorous research and evaluation projects that will: Identify and inform the forensic community of best practices through the evaluation of existing laboratory protocols; and/or Have a direct and immediate impact on laboratory efficiency and assist in making laboratory policy decisions. The intent of this program is to direct the findings of this research and evaluation toward the identification of the most efficient, accurate, reliable, and cost-effective methods for the identification, analysis, and interpretation of physical evidence for criminal justice purposes. Projects should address the challenges and needs of the forensic science community, including, but not limited to, the operational needs discussed at the 2020 and 2021 TWG meetings, which may be found on NIJ.ojp.gov. NIJ’s Forensic Science Technology Working Group (TWG) assists in identifying and prioritizing operational needs and requirements of the field, which are intended to facilitate proposal development. Additional research needs of the forensic science community can be found at the Organization of Scientific Area Committees website. Applications proposing research involving partnerships with criminal justice or other agencies, should include a strong letter of support, signed by an appropriate decision-making authority from each proposed, partnering agency. A letter of support should include the partnering agency’s acknowledgement that de-identified data derived from, provided to, or obtained through this project will be archived by the grant recipient in accordance with their data archiving plan (see Data Archiving Plan under "Application and Submission Information"). If selected for award, grantees will be expected to have a formal agreement in place with partnering agencies by January 1, 2023. That formal agreement must include a provision to meet the data archiving requirements of the award. In the case of partnerships that will involve the use of federal award funds by multiple partnering agencies to carry out the proposed project, only one entity/partnering agency may be the applicant (as is the case with any application submitted in response to this solicitation); any others must be proposed as subrecipients.