Justice Department Announces $17.6 Million in Awards to Support Sex Offender Registration, Intervention and Treatment

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs (OJP) today announced more than $17 million in Fiscal Year 2014 grant assistance for states, territories, tribal governments and other entities to use to implement, enhance and maintain sex offender programming throughout the United States.

"These awards provide a wide range of assistance to help states, communities, tribes, and even institutions of higher learning manage sex offenders," said Dawn Doran, Acting Director of the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART).  "They will give jurisdictions the tools they need to protect their citizens, intervene in cases involving deviant sexual behavior, and offer families, neighbors, and students valuable information and resources."

These grants, administered by OJP's SMART Office, provide funding for the implementation of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), the development of a campus sexual assault perpetrator treatment program, continued support for sex offender management fellows and the SORNA Tribal Training and Technical Assistance Program.  They also support partnerships between the SMART Office and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), as well as the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW).

Of the $17 million awarded, nearly $13 million will be used to develop or enhance sex offender registration programs, improve law enforcement and other justice agency information sharing as it relates to sex offender registration and notification, and implement other efforts aimed at furthering the objectives of SORNA.

More than $1.3 million will be used to create and implement a treatment curriculum for individuals who commit sexual assault on college or university campuses through the SMART FY 14 Campus Sexual Assault Perpetrator Treatment Project.

The SMART Office continues to collaborate with OJJDP in support of the Youth with Sexual Behavior Problems (YSBP) Program. The SMART Office contributed $900,000 to the program to help fund multidisciplinary approaches to treating youth with sexual behavior problems and their child victims and families, document the evolution of intervention models developed to respond to these cases, and evaluate the YSBP program. For the first time, these funds will be available to develop YSBP programs in Indian Country. Additionally, the SMART Office is collaborating with NIJ by providing $1 million to support research related to a key component of SORNA: information sharing and its effect on tracking sex offenders and promoting community awareness.

A supplemental award of $45,000 was made for the Sex Offender Management Fellowship Program to help SMART broaden programming that supports the fellowship that focuses on victims' issues in sex offender management.

The SMART Office also continues to support the SORNA Tribal Training and Technical Assistance Program, awarding $500,000 to provide training and technical assistance to help tribal jurisdictions substantially implement SORNA. This year, funds will be used to qualitatively evaluate SORNA implementation in Indian Country.

An award of $899,748 will provide continued support for the maintenance, operations and enhancements of NSOPW, the Sex Offender Registry Tool, the SORNA Exchange Portal and the Tribe and Territory Sex Offender Registry System. NSOPW contains links to state, territory, and tribal sex offender public websites to provide a free service to the public to search for registered sex offenders on a national scale and provides prevention and educational resources to users.

SOURCE Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs