WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, has awarded $2.2 million to assist Rhode Island criminal justice agencies during the current fiscal year. The money – from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program – will finance state and municipal initiatives for crime prevention and control.
The grants were jointly announced by Robert Clark Corrente, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island, and Thomas H. Mongeau, executive director of the R.I. Justice Commission, which administers the bulk of the state’s Byrne Grant funds.
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The money includes a $1.4 million award to be administered by the Justice Commission, plus another $771,255 in Byrne Grant funds that will go directly to 12 local communities.
Of the statewide grant, about 41 percent will go to municipal police departments across the state and to the R.I. State Police, mostly to help modernize the departments’ record-keeping and communication systems. The remainder will help support the state Drug Court, an R.I. Superior Court program that provides rehabilitation and other support services to certain drug defendants; and the Precious Metals and Pawn Database, maintained by the Office of the Attorney General to help law-enforcement agencies solve crimes and recover stolen merchandise.
[EDIT: The amount received by the R.I. Justice Commission in Byrne Justice Assistance Grants has fallen sharply in recent years, RIJC grant manager David J. LeDoux told Providence Business News in an Aug. 27 e-mail interview. “From a $2.7 million average in years 2000 [to] 2004,” he said, the grants fell to $1.6 million in 2005 and less than $1 million in 2006, before rebounding to $1.4 million in the current round of awards. “Unfortunately, these drastic cuts in federal Byrne/JAG funding … have forced the RIJC to cut back or eliminate many programs,” LeDoux said.]
The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program is named for New York City Police Officer Edward R. Byrne, who was killed in 1988 while protecting a prospective witness in a drug-trafficking case.
For more information about the R.I. Justice Commission or the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, visit www.rijustice.ri.gov.
