DOJ Funding Update:
A Deeper Look at the Cuts

May 2025

Key Takeaways

In April, the Trump Administration terminated 373 grants from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP).
The defunded grants were initially valued at about $820 million, but many were multiyear grants in various stages of payout and implementation. The Administration has rescinded the remaining balances of these awards, which a CCJ analysis estimates at about $500 million.
The terminated grants provided federal support for violence reduction, policing and prosecution, victims’ services, juvenile justice and child protection, substance use and mental health treatment, corrections and reentry, justice system enhancements, research and evaluation, and other state- and local-level public safety functions.
The terminated funding was largely appropriated or authorized by Congress for specific programs or purpose areas. OJP administers these funds in alignment with the needs of the field and, to the extent possible, evidence-based and promising practices.
The cuts affected grantees from organizations in 37 states across the country, in red and blue states and urban, suburban, and rural areas alike.
Grants to nonprofit organizations made up the vast majority of the terminations, while grants to state and local government agencies accounted for a smaller portion. Grants to public and private universities appear to have been left intact.
The deepest cuts were to organizations that provide training and technical assistance to OJP grantees and the field at large, including reductions to programs that paired expert support with pass-through funding for community-based organizations and government agencies.
About 60% of terminated grants did not include references to diversity, equity, race, gender, or related terms in their project descriptions, according to a CCJ analysis.
Many of the grant terminations will jeopardize public safety and trust in government, and have resulted in staff layoffs at organizations whose funding was pulled. The cuts also risk wasting federal funds by terminating projects before their deliverables are fulfilled.

terminated grants

affected organizations

$ 0 M

total initial award value

Background

The cuts to DOJ funding began in early April with the abrupt cancellation of five grants¹ to the Vera Institute of Justice, followed by the termination of “all nonessential funding” ² for the Maine Department of Corrections.³

The trickle of cancellations became a deluge on April 22, when DOJ terminated 365 awards on the basis that the work “no longer effectuates Department priorities.” ⁴ According to funding termination notices sent to grantees, those priorities include “combatting violent crime, protecting American children, and supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault, and better coordinating law enforcement efforts at all levels of government.” ⁵

The authority to end grants midstream has its origins in 2020, when the Office of Management and Budget revised federal regulations to specify that a federal award may be terminated by the awarding agency “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” ^6,⁷ The Administration has cited the same authority for mass terminations of grants from other federal agencies as well, including funding from the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education.⁸

New administrations have the prerogative to shape spending to support their policy preferences, but in the past this authority was applied to future expenditures. There is no precedent for rescinding funds without cause from a swath of DOJ grantees that have already successfully applied for and been awarded federal dollars.

Awards were individually classified by topic area and function based on the project abstract that was submitted with the grant application and circulated as part of the chart of terminated grants. There are several limitations to this approach.

First, the analysis relies on the brief project abstract submitted by the grantee at the time of application. The abstract may not include all relevant project information, and the nature of the project may have changed somewhat since the time of application. Second, grant projects are often multifaceted and could be reasonably classified under multiple topic areas. For example, a reentry program for youth with behavioral health disorders could be classified as “corrections, reentry, and supervision”, “juvenile justice and child protection”, or “substance use and mental health.”

While the classification of award function is generally more straightforward, some projects could be reasonably classified in multiple categories. For example, a grant to a national nonprofit organization that is partnering with a single local school district to deliver and evaluate bullying prevention trainings for teachers contains elements of site-based, TTA, and research award projects.

In the interest of transparency, and to allow readers to make their own assessments of the data, CCJ has published the dataset used in this analysis as an interactive table below. For the full dataset, including project abstracts, see the Appendix.

Table 1. The Scope of Funding Cuts (Interactive)

The Scope of Funding Cuts

Taken together, the cuts span across goals and issue areas, touching nearly every element of America’s safety and justice systems. In total, the Administration has rescinded the remaining balances of 373 awards originally valued at $819.7 million. While the exact amount rescinded has not been made public, a CCJ analysis of a federal spending database, USASpending, suggests that grantees collectively lost an estimated $500 million in remaining funding.⁹

Voided grants include projects that run afoul of the administration’s views regarding gender or diversity, equity, and inclusion.¹⁰ Many other terminated programs appear to be aligned with the administration’s stated priorities, including for violence reduction, law enforcement efforts, victim services, child protection, and other public safety and justice functions. Many of the cuts also represent issues long championed by bipartisan coalitions in Congress and the field.

Figure 1. Terminated Funding by Topic

Community Safety and Violence Intervention

In total, the federal government eliminated grants initially valued at roughly $169 million in funding for community safety and violence reduction programs.

Evidence-based models for reducing violent crime, particularly community violence intervention strategies, were hit hard by the funding cuts. These strategies deploy trained outreach workers to de-escalate conflict among the people at highest risk of violence and make connections to services designed to interrupt cycles of trauma and harm.¹¹ Such programs have demonstrated potential for strengthening public safety and conserving taxpayer resources, showing statistically significant reductions in measures of violent crime in cities from Sacramento to Chicago to New York.¹²

The Administration made deep cuts to OJP’s Community Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, the primary source of federal funding for community violence intervention (CVI) models. This initiative is funded through a combination of annual appropriations and dollars authorized by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, which included $250 million for community violence intervention grants over a five-year period.¹³ Since the initiative’s launch in 2022, OJP has invested $300 million in CVI programming and related research.¹⁴

Roughly half of those investments have now been cut, including grants worth about $145 million for violence intervention programs and training and technical assistance, plus an additional $8.6 million for evaluations, research, and related efforts. The cuts included funding for intermediary organizations that provide microgrants and hands-on support to smaller CVI providers, helping to build organizational capacity to scale and sustain their services.

Many of these grants provided organizations with the resources to hire additional personnel and serve more individuals at high risk of violence. With the termination of these funds, organizations are facing difficult decisions about laying off staff and discontinuing services in high-need neighborhoods.¹⁵

Also among the cuts were grants supporting hospital-based interventions for victims of violent crime. These models are grounded in research that shows that prior violent victimization is a strong predictor of future violent injuries.¹⁶ Hospital-based interventions work to disrupt this cycle by deploying outreach workers to engage high-risk victims at their hospital bedside, discouraging retaliatory violence and offering supportive services to meet their immediate- and long-term needs.¹⁷

Law Enforcement and Prosecution

The cuts include $71.7 million to policing and prosecution programs, including longstanding efforts to address violent crime and acts of targeted violence. Examples of canceled grants include training and technical assistance for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a DOJ initiative launched in 2001 that brings together law enforcement and prosecutors across all levels of government to target local violent crime challenges.¹⁸ The Administration also defunded the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program, which helps equip law enforcement and prosecutors to identify, investigate, and interdict potential acts of domestic and international terrorism, targeted violence, and hate crimes.¹⁹Since the program’s launch in 1996, SLATT has trained more than 427,000 justice system practitioners in practices for detecting and countering threats.²⁰

The funding cuts also hit violence reduction resources specific to rural policing agencies. Rural agencies often contend with crime across a vast geographic area yet can lack the resources available to their counterparts in suburban or urban jurisdictions and may struggle to compete for federal grants. Despite these challenges, the Administration terminated the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, a program that funds intermediary organizations that deliver financial assistance directly to dozens of rural law enforcement agencies. These funds allow agencies to upgrade technology and equipment, hire and deploy personnel, support victim services and crime prevention programming, and fill other gaps in policing resources.²¹ These pass-through funds were eliminated, as was at least one direct award to a rural law enforcement agency.

The Administration also shut down the Violent Crime Reduction Roadmap, a one-stop-shop for DOJ violent crime reduction resources launched in 2023.²² The Roadmap was organized around the action steps for reducing gun violence identified by experts with the Council on Criminal Justice in Saving Lives: Ten Essential Actions Cities Can Take to Reduce Violence Now. Under a now-canceled grant to a national law enforcement group, policing executives, mayors and other local leaders could access free training and technical assistance to implement the roadmap’s action steps for developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based strategies violence reduction strategies.

Also among the terminated grants was funding for the Officer Robert Wilson III Preventing Violence Against Law Enforcement Officers and Ensuring Officer Resilience and Survivability (VALOR) Initiative, a program dedicated to improving the safety and wellness of law enforcement officers across the country. For the past 15 years, VALOR has worked with law enforcement agencies to strengthen officers’ physical and mental health, providing resources on topics ranging from stress management to roadway safety to suicide prevention.²³ The federal funding cuts have now jeopardized these resources that help officers safely navigate the challenging and often-dangerous conditions of their work.

Victims of Crime

The terminations originally included grants worth roughly $50 million in support for victims and survivors of crime. The Administration has reportedly restored seven victim services grants, yet the terminations include another 50 awards from OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime.²⁴

Eliminated grants include funding for victim service providers to meet basic needs of crime victims in historically underserved communities in New York, Oklahoma, Georgia, Illinois, and California. These grants were originally awarded in 2024 as part of a new program that elicited an overwhelming number of applications for funding. The demand for these grants, which came from victim service providers, speaks to the need for resources to serve basic needs arising from victimization, such as emergency housing assistance, transportation, nutritional assistance, childcare, and other critical services.

The funding cuts also undermine services for victims of sexual assault. The Administration canceled investments in training and assistance for sexual assault nurse examiners, registered nurses who are specially trained to provide appropriate care and medical forensic examinations to survivors of sexual violence.

Other terminated grants include direct funding for victims’ services for survivors of human trafficking, as well as technical assistance for service providers to meet the needs of victims with disabilities and those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and for states in effectively administering federal victim compensation and assistance funds.

Juvenile Justice and Child Protection

There were around $137 million in cuts to programs designed to protect and support youth, including efforts to safeguard children against abuse and neglect. Terminated grants include funding for the regional child advocacy center that trains and assists professionals in investigating, prosecuting, and treating child abuse in 13 western states. The Administration also canceled funding to train judicial and court personnel on model practices for handling child abuse and neglect cases and for serving young victims of such offenses.

The grant terminations also impact juvenile justice system operations, putting protections and services for justice-involved young people at risk. The Administration withdrew funding for technical assistance to states in meeting the requirements of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, which establishes national standards for the care and custody of kids in the justice system.²⁵ Eliminated grants included funding to prevent youth detention for “status offenses,” or noncriminal behaviors like truancy or curfew violation that are prohibited only for minors. Other funding cuts included emergency planning assistance to help juvenile justice residential facilities safely navigate natural and manmade disasters, public health emergencies, and other crisis situations.

School-based programming was terminated, as well. Funding cuts eliminated programs to prevent bullying and school violence in Oregon, Minnesota, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Administration also terminated a program worth $8 million to support nonprofit organizations working in collaboration with law enforcement and community coalitions to implement youth substance use prevention programming in schools and extracurricular settings.

Substance Use and Mental Health

The funding cuts include $88 million in OJP grants focused on addressing substance use and mental health disorders in the justice system and the community. The eliminated grants were awarded under programs such as the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program and the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program, both of which were created by bipartisan legislation.²⁶ These terminations come on the heels of deep cuts to behavioral health programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, further undermining the nation’s response to the overdose crisis and other pressing public health challenges.²⁷

Terminated OJP grants include funding for co-responder teams that pair law enforcement officers with healthcare professionals to jointly respond to behavioral health incidents. While there is need for additional rigorous research on these programs, preliminary evidence suggests that co-responder models enhance crisis de-escalation outcomes and improve connections to supportive services for people with behavioral health disorders.²⁸ These models also hold the potential to limit unnecessary arrests and reduce police time spent on behavioral health calls-for-service, freeing up officers to focus on violent crime and other pressing issues in the community.²⁹ In qualitative studies, both police officers and those served by co-responder teams have supported the value of these models.³⁰ Nonetheless, the Administration eliminated funding for such programs in Mississippi, Texas, and Colorado.

The Administration terminated funding for other law enforcement- and prosecutor-led interventions, including funding for New Jersey programs that divert people into substance use treatment and supportive services designed to address the underlying causes of low-level illegal behavior.

Other disinvestments include behavioral health treatment courts, substance use treatment for justice-involved youth, and the implementation of Overdose Fatality Reviews, which allow jurisdictions to analyze local data on overdoses to identify trends and opportunities to prevent future fatalities.

Corrections, Supervision, and Reentry

The Administration eliminated grants worth $76.7 million to support corrections, community supervision, and reentry, programming.

Cuts to correctional funding jeopardize efforts to uphold the standards of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a bipartisan measure enacted in 2003 to protect against sexual abuse in confinement.³¹ The Administration cut off funding for the National PREA Resource Center, the one-stop-shop for technical assistance and best practices in ending sexual abuse in prisons and jails. The Resource Center also supports PREA audits to monitor adult and juvenile correctional facilities’ compliance with federal protections against sexual abuse.

Grant terminations also eliminated efforts to improve reentry outcomes and promote evidence-based recidivism reduction strategies. The cuts included grants funded under the Second Chance Act, a law passed in 2008 and reauthorized in 2018 with consistent bipartisan support.³² Among the cuts were programs focused on addressing barriers to stable housing for formerly incarcerated individuals, who are nearly ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public.³³ Housing insecurity itself can elevate the risk of recidivism, contributing to a cycle of homelessness and justice system involvement that comes with significant societal costs.³⁴ Programs that pair housing services with wraparound reentry supports can reduce future arrests and convictions, offering jurisdictions a cost-efficient model for improving reentry and public safety outcomes.³⁵ However, support for evidence-based housing practices was cut, undermining efforts to reduce the cycle of homelessness and recidivism.

The Administration also cut funding designed to promote access to healthcare for formerly incarcerated people. Continuity of care is particularly critical in the weeks following release from prison, when individuals are at 12 times greater risk of death than the general public.³⁶ Healthcare can help reduce the immediate risk of mortality, as well as promoting longer term reentry success. Expansions to Medicaid, for example, are associated with reduced rates of reincarceration among recently-released individuals.³⁷ The funding cuts eliminated resources and assistance to help state correctional agencies navigate recent changes to Medicaid policy and expand coverage for pre- and post-release healthcare services.

Other cuts include the Community Supervision Resource Center, a centralized hub of evidence-based tools and assistance for probation, parole, and pretrial agencies. As a result, the Resource Center has terminated technical assistance for over 40 jurisdictions that had sought its support in improving community supervision policies and practices. Terminations also include funding for a faith-based organization building a network of reentry services for women in Missouri, for reentry programs serving two rural regions of Virginia, for the development of streamlined data systems within Pennsylvania’s probation and parole agency, among other activities focused on facilitating reentry success.

Justice System Improvements and Strategic Planning

The Administration eliminated grants originally valued at around $92 million in funding for strategic planning and enhancements to justice system operations. These cuts included funding for the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), another program with a long history of bipartisan support.³⁸ Through JRI, state leaders work with experts to target justice system inefficiencies that drive up correctional populations and spending. The JRI process brings together bipartisan, multidisciplinary working groups of state policymakers, law enforcement leaders, behavioral health practitioners, crime victims, and other stakeholders to build consensus around sustainable solutions to the state’s unique justice system challenges.³⁹

To date, 44 states have used JRI to develop data-driven and cost-efficient strategies to reduce crime and recidivism, including changes to sentencing, supervision, behavioral health, and reentry practices.⁴⁰ Many states have also used JRI to enhance victims’ rights and expand access to services and restitution.⁴¹ In total, states have averted or saved more than $3.2 billion in justice system costs through JRI, and have reinvested a percentage of these savings to improve public safety and justice system operations.⁴² At the same time, the initiative reports that crime in participating states has declined by 38% on average from 2008 to 2023.⁴³ Despite these results, the Administration canceled grants to the training and technical assistance providers that facilitate JRI, which included pass-through funding for state governments to implement data-driven reforms. States that have passed legislation resulting from the JRI process will no longer receive up to $500,000 to support the implementation and sustainability of these policies.

The Administration also terminated strategic planning and technical assistance for state governments as part of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG) program, the leading source of federal justice system funding for states and localities. Byrne JAG is a formula grant that provides jurisdictions with the flexibility to fund a wide range of program areas, including law enforcement, prosecution, courts, corrections, substance use treatment, victim and witness initiatives, and more.⁴⁴ To receive JAG funds, states are statutorily required to submit a comprehensive strategic plan detailing how funds will be used to improve the effective administration of justice.⁴⁵ This requirement was established by the Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2016, a bipartisan bill that also mandates the Attorney General to provide technical assistance to jurisdictions in developing and implementing Byrne JAG strategic plans. Congress specifies that the Attorney General may enter into agreements with non-governmental organizations to deliver the required support.⁴⁶ Nonetheless, the Administration canceled funding for Byrne JAG strategic planning technical assistance, undercutting DOJ’s ability to meet its statutory requirements and to promote effective and efficient usages of state JAG funds.

Research, Evaluation, and Data Collection

The Administration made deep cuts to grants that support research, evaluation, and data collection, largely funded by OJP’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Roughly $64 million in funding for such efforts was terminated, spanning a range of public safety and justice topics. The now-rescinded grants include research focused on preventing acts of violent domestic extremism, protecting older adults against abuse and financial exploitation, and improving hate crime reporting and response. The terminations also include evaluations of hospital- and community-based interventions designed to identify what works—and what doesn’t—in violent crime reduction. Other canceled grants evaluated strategies for boosting law enforcement officer retention and mitigating policing staffing crises, as well as models for improving officer safety and wellness.

The Administration also eliminated training and technical assistance to help policymakers and practitioners collect and analyze data, build partnerships with researchers, and translate evidence into action. Among these cuts was funding to increase state-level compliance with the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA), which requires states to collect and report data to DOJ on fatalities in the justice system.⁴⁷ The now-terminated technical assistance program was designed to increase the accuracy and completeness of DCRA data, helping to shine a light on the circumstances surrounding deaths in custody and ultimately to develop solutions to prevent future fatalities. Taken together, the cuts to research and related funding will set back knowledge about effective and evidence-based approaches to safety and justice.

Trends and Analysis

Administration officials have characterized the cuts in recent social media posts and official documents but not shared the specific methodology used to identify which grants to cut and which to retain, aside from the DOJ priorities shared in grant termination notices and with the media.⁴⁸

For example, a fact sheet accompanying the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget describes a sample of recently terminated DOJ grants, noting that “[i]nstead of stopping crime and keeping Americans safe, DOJ grant programs have been funding DEI and cultural Marxism.”⁴⁹ A CCJ analysis of the descriptions of terminated awards, however, finds that 69% do not include references to the terms “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “racial,” “racism,” or “gender.” When the analysis is expanded to include “culturally specific” and “culturally responsive,” 63% of terminated grants do not include a reference to the specified terms in the project abstracts submitted with their grant application.

Further analyses of the list of terminated grants, obtained from media reporting and circulation on stakeholder listservs, yield additional insights into the Administration’s priorities.

Grant Function

Figure 2. Terminated Funding by Grant Function

Training and technical assistance (TTA) grants were significantly affected. These grants, generally awarded to national nonprofit organizations, play a critical role in maximizing the impact of federal investments at the state, local, Tribal, and community-levels. TTA providers typically deliver trainings and intensive support to OJP awardees and the broader field, helping to equip them with the practical and specialized knowledge they need to most effectively implement grant-funded programs. National-level TTA allows jurisdictions across the country to benefit from evidence-based and cutting-edge practices, helping to ensure that citizens have access to effective systems of safety and justice, regardless of what state or city they live in. And by creating centralized sources of expertise for safety and justice practitioners, the federal government offers a more efficient alternative to a patchwork of state and locally funded trainings and assistance.

Other TTA programs, like the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, provide microgrants and expert guidance to entities that have not received direct funding from OJP. These intermediary organizations help expand the reach of federal resources to smaller organizations and agencies that would otherwise face barriers to accessing competitive grants. TTA awards are an important complement to OJP’s investments in site-based initiatives, and the deep cuts to these programs risk undermining the impact of OJP’s remaining grants.

The funding cuts also disproportionately hurt research and evaluation efforts, largely funded by OJP’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ). NIJ-funded projects make up a small percentage of OJP’s overall grantmaking, accounting for only 3% of the total number of awards made since FY 2021.⁵⁰ Yet 12% of the 373 terminated awards came from NIJ.

Funding Recipients

Figure 3. Funding Cuts by Organization Type

More than 200 organizations had at least one OJP grant terminated, although the funding cuts will impact many more organizations that received subgrants and training and technical assistance from awards that have now been canceled. The vast majority of terminated grants went to nonprofits and other non-governmental organizations, while state and local governments made up a smaller share of the cuts.

State and local government agencies lost grants initially worth a combined $29 million, more than half of which went to New Jersey government agencies. State and local governments also lost funding in Arizona, California, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington.

Notably, while many NIJ research grants go to academic institutions, no public or private universities were included in the funding cuts.

Geography

Figure 4. Terminated Funding by State

Funding cuts were spread out across the country, affecting rural, suburban, and urban areas in 37 states, blue and red alike.

The deepest disinvestment came in jurisdictions that are home to the largest training and technical assistance providers. Florida, for example, lost awards initially valued at $108 million, driven by massive cuts to Tallahassee’s Institute of Intergovernmental Research. Likewise, grant cuts in Kentucky exceeded $89 million, most of which came from the Lexington-based Council of State Governments.

Setting aside grants to TTA providers, the funding cuts spanned 36 states, with the largest divestments in California, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

Year

OJP grants typically provide several years of funding for a project, with most grants remaining active for a three-year period. As a result, the majority of terminated awards were originally made in fiscal year 2021 or later. A smaller percentage (7%) of terminated grants, accounting for $53.7 million in original investments, were initially awarded during the first Trump Administration and likely received supplementary funding to continue grant activities through the Biden Administration.

Implications

The terminated grants represent only fraction of the $15.6 billion in grants that OJP has awarded since fiscal year 2021, the period when most of the terminated awards were originally made.⁵¹ Yet for many terminated grantees, these funds made up a critical portion of their organizational budgets. Already, staff members have been laid off and services discontinued.⁵² While the full impact of these cuts remains to be seen, the terminations pose risks for public safety and trust in government in the longer-term.

Public Safety

The OJP funding cuts represent a federal disinvestment in public safety and justice at the state and local levels. Many of the eliminated funds supported evidence-informed strategies for driving down violence, as well as innovative and promising approaches for improving community safety and wellbeing.

These funding cuts come just as the nation is emerging from the pandemic-era spike in violent crime. Recent analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice finds that violent crime rates in 2024 dropped to pre-pandemic levels or below, and preliminary data from 2025 suggests declines have continued into the early months of this year.⁵³ These trends are promising, but sustained reductions are far from guaranteed. Even as crime rates have fallen overall, progress remains uneven, with too many Americans still experiencing unacceptably high rates of homicide and motor vehicle theft. And because public safety happens at the local level, the national snapshot can obscure significant variations in crime rates across jurisdictions — and even across neighborhoods within the same locality. Many of the community violence intervention programs that got cut are in fact geared to these hyper-local crime trends.

Taken together, these funding cuts put public safety at risk and undermine hard-won reductions in violent crime.

Trust in Government

Beyond potential impacts to public safety, the cuts have long-term implications for public trust in government institutions. Regardless of regulatory authority, the terminations represent a violation of trust in the federal government’s relationship with funding recipients and the communities they serve. State, local, Tribal, community-based institutions and other stakeholders navigate a rigorous competitive application process to win federal awards, dedicating significant organizational resources to developing project plans, building partnerships, and writing grant proposals. If they are successful, these entities enter an agreement with DOJ that pledges a pre-set amount of money over a multi-year period, to be used for mutually agreed upon activities and initiatives.

These grantees took DOJ at its word, based on decades of experience across Republican and Democratic administrations. They used scarce organizational resources to develop operational budgets and management plans for the life cycle of the grants. With the expectation of these funds, grant recipients hired personnel and made commitments to deliver services to the public. Now, these resources have evaporated overnight, along with expectation that federal grants come with a meaningful guarantee of reliability.

Moving forward, state and local governments and non-profit organizations may be more wary of federal resources and engagement with the federal government writ large. The cuts will likely discourage future applications for federal funding even when the need for safety and victim services is great. And as citizens begin to notice reductions in services, the terminations risk eroding public trust in the federal government.

Inefficiency and Waste

Canceling funding partway through the grant lifecycle also introduces the risk of government waste. Many of these grants are already well underway, and federal funds have been expended on projects that are only partially complete. DOJ risks wasting upfront investments by terminating these grants before their deliverables are fulfilled. For example, researchers have utilized funds to collect data that they may no longer be able to analyze and disseminate. Schools have developed behavioral threat assessment models that they may no longer be able to implement. Community-based organizations have assessed the gaps in violence prevention and recidivism reduction services, but they may no longer have the resources to fill them. By cutting these programs off prematurely, the federal government forgoes its return on these existing investments.

Conclusion

In the wake of April’s grant terminations, the outlook for OJP funding remains unclear. While DOJ officials have suggested that further funding cuts may be on the horizon, the Administration has also shown a willingness to reinstate specific grants as they have learned of the implications of funding terminations.

The coming weeks and months will undoubtedly shed more light on the Administration’s funding priorities for safety and justice. OJP should soon begin to roll out FY 2025 funding opportunities, and the White House is expected to release additional details of the President’s FY 2026 Budget Request. As the landscape continues to evolve, the CCJ Justice in Perspective series will continue to track and assess these and other developments that impact federal justice funding, policy and operations.

Acknowledgements

Amy L. Solomon was the lead author of this report, with support from Betsy Pearl and other members of the Council on Criminal Justice team.

Thank you to Brian Edsall, Cameryn Farrow, and Rachel Yen for their support in the design and communications efforts for this report.

About Justice in Perspective

Justice in Perspective is a nonpartisan series examining the complexities of federal justice funding, policy, research, and operations. It is led by CCJ Senior Fellow Amy L. Solomon, former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs.

Suggested Citation

Solomon, A., & Pearl, B. (2025). DOJ funding update: A deeper look at the cuts. Council on Criminal Justice. https://counciloncj.org/doj-funding-update-a-deeper-look-at-the-cuts/

Appendix

Endnotes

¹ Vera Institute of Justice. (2025, April 9). Vera Institute of Justice targeted by Department of Justice funding cuts [Press release]. https://www.vera.org/newsroom/vera-institute-of-justice-targeted-by-department-of-justice-funding-cuts

² Trump administration to pull federal funds for Maine prisons over trans inmate. (2025, April 9). NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/trump-administration-pull-federal-funds-maine-prisons-trans-inmate-rcna200481

³Terminated grants to the Vera Institute of Justice and the Maine Department of Corrections are included in the interactive dataset below and in analyses throughout this brief.

⁴Clayton, A. (2025, April 24). ‘Like a slap in the face’: Trump officials cut hundreds of millions to combat gun violence and opioid addiction. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/trump-administration-funding-gun-violence-opioid-addiction. Stein, P., Jackman, T., & Roebuck, J. (2025, April 25). DOJ cancels grants for gun-violence and addiction prevention, victim advocacy. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/22/justice-department-grants-canceled/. Tarinelli, R. (2025, April 25). Organizations wrestle with Justice Department grant cuts. Roll Call. https://rollcall.com/2025/04/25/organizations-wrestle-with-justice-department-grant-cuts/.

⁵ Bernstein, N. (2025, April 25). Trump delivers massive blow to youth justice programs. The Imprint. https://imprintnews.org/justice/juvenile-justice-2/trump-delivers-massive-blow-to-youth-justice-programs/260778

⁶OMB proposed removing the phrase as part of a package of revisions to the regulations in 2023, noting that federal agencies would retain the ability to terminate funding in accordance with their own award terms and conditions. Although the proposed deletion received mixed feedback during the mandatory public comment period, supportive comments noted that the revision “would prevent agencies from terminating high-performing projects based on shifting agency priorities” and would “eliminate a vague standard for award termination.” Ultimately, however, the final rule retained the language, adding a provision to specify that federal agencies may terminate an award on the basis that it no longer effectuates program goals or agency priorities, provided that the language is included in terms and conditions of the Federal award.

⁷ Guidance for Grants and Agreements, 85 FR 49506 (August 13, 2020) (to be codified at 2 CFR Parts 25, 170, 183, and 200).

⁸Johnson, C. Y., & Achenbach, J. (2025, March 27). These 5 words have killed millions in grants and advanced Trump’s agenda. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/03/27/trump-federal-grants-research-cuts/

⁹ Estimates are based on USASpending.gov data on outlays (i.e., when federal money is actually paid out, rather than obligated) for individual grant awards. Federal agencies submit data to USASpending on a monthly or quarterly basis. Estimates include 371 of the 373 terminated OJP awards; USASpending did not include records for two awards.

¹⁰ Bondi, P. (2025, April 23). The Department of Justice has started cutting millions of dollars in wasteful grants. Some of the greatest hits include: X. https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/1915184169069818356

¹¹ Community Violence Intervention. (n.d.). University of Chicago Crime Lab. https://crimelab.uchicago.edu/topics/community-violence-intervention/. What is community violence intervention? (n.d.). Giffords Center for Violence Intervention. https://giffords.org/intervention/what-is-community-violence-intervention/

¹² Corburn, J., Nidam, Y., & Fukutome-Lopez, A. (2022). The Art and Science of Urban Gun Violence Reduction: Evidence from the Advance Peace Program in Sacramento, California. Urban Science, 6(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6010006. Delgado, S. A., Alsabahi, L., Wolff, K., Alexander, N., Cobar, P., & Butts, J. A. (2017). The effects of cure violence in the South Bronx and East New York, Brooklyn. Research and Evaluation Center, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. https://johnjayrec.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CVinSoBronxEastNY.pdf.

Skogan, W. G., Hartnett, S. M., Bump, N., & Dubois, J. (2008). Evaluation of CeaseFire-Chicago. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227181.pdf .

¹³ Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, Pub. L. 117—159. https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ159/PLAW-117publ159.pdf

¹⁴ Office of Justice Programs. OJP awards since FY2021 by solicitation [Data set]. https://charts.ojp.usdoj.gov/t/public/views/OJPAwardsDashboardallFiscalYears/AwardsBySolicitations?%3Aembed=y&%3Aiid=2&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y

¹⁵ Barber, R. (2025, April 25). Without DOJ funding, community violence intervention programs face uncertainty. Nonprofit Quarterly. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/without-doj-funding-community-violence-intervention-programs-face-uncertainty/. Brier, B. (2025, April 29). Layoffs, shutdowns at NJ violence intervention programs. NJ Spotlight News. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/04/us-justice-department-cuts-funding-immediate-impact-nj-violence-intervention-programs-layoffs-shutdowns/

¹⁶ Cunningham, R. M., Ranney, M., Newton, M., Woodhull, W., Zimmerman, M., & Walton, M. A. (2013). Characteristics of youth seeking emergency care for assault injuries. PEDIATRICS, 133(1), e96–e105. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-1864. Fornari, M. J., Badolato, G. M., Rao, K., Goyal, M. K., McCarter, R., & Donnelly, K. A. (2023). Violent injury as a predictor of subsequent assault-related emergency department visits among adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 72(6), 972–976. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.12.014. Purtle, J., Dicker, R., Cooper, C., Corbin, T., Greene, M. B., Marks, A., Creaser, D., Topp, D., & Moreland, D. (2013). Hospital-based violence intervention programs save lives and money. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 75(2), 331–333. https://doi.org/10.1097/ta.0b013e318294f518

¹⁷ What is an HVIP? (n.d.). The HAVI. https://www.thehavi.org/what-is-an-hvip

¹⁸ Project Safe Neighborhoods. (n.d.). United States Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/psn

¹⁹ U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance. (2023, March). State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training Program. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250201225913/https://bja.ojp.gov/doc/slatt-program.pdf

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ National Policing Institute. (n.d.). Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative. Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative. https://ruralvcri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/RVCRI-Program-One-Pager_FINAL.pdf

²² U.S. Department of Justice. (2023, December 11). Justice Department announces release of Violent Crime Reduction [Press release]. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-release-violent-crime-reduction-roadmap

²³ U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance. BJA VALOR Initiative. (2022). https://bja.ojp.gov/doc/VALOR-Initiative-Overview-Booklet.pdf. U.S. Department of Justice. (2010, October 26). Attorney General Holder unveils Valor Initiative to protect law enforcement Officers [Press release]. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/attorney-general-holder-unveils-valor-initiative-protect-law-enforcement-officers

²⁴ Lynch, S., & Eisler, P. (2025, April 24). US Justice Dept grant cuts valued at $811 million, people and records say. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-grant-cuts-valued-811-million-people-familiar-say-2025-04-24/

²⁵ Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, Pub. L. 93-415, 88 Stat. 1109, as amended by the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018, Public Law 115-385, 132 Stat. 5123.

²⁶ The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program is authorized by the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (MIOTCRA) (Public Law 108-414), and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-416), as amended by the 21st Century Cures Act (Public Law 114-255). The Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program, formerly known as the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program, is authorized by Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (Public Law 114—198).

²⁷ Mann, B. (2025, March 27). Trump team revokes $11 billion in funding for addiction, mental health care. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/27/nx-s1-5342368/addiction-trump-mental-health-funding

²⁸ International Association of Chiefs of Police and the University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy (2021, March). Assessing the impact of co-responder team programs: a review of the research. https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/IDD/Review%20of%20Co-Responder%20Team%20Evaluations.pdf

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ International Association of Chiefs of Police and the University of Cincinnati Center for Police Research and Policy (2021, March). Assessing the impact of co-responder team programs: a review of the research. https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/IDD/Review%20of%20Co-Responder%20Team%20Evaluations.pdf. Morabito, M. S., Savage, J., Sneider, L., & Wallace, K. (2018). Police Response to People with Mental Illnesses in a Major U.S. City: The Boston Experience with the Co-Responder Model. Victims & Offenders, 13(8), 1093–1105. https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2018.1514340

³¹ PREA Resource Center. (n.d.). Prison Rape Elimination Act. https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/about/prison-rape-elimination-act

³² CSG Justice Center. (2018, December 21). President Trump Signs First Step Act into Law, Reauthorizing Second Chance Act – CSG Justice Center. https://csgjusticecenter.org/2018/12/21/president-trump-signs-first-step-act-into-law-reauthorizing-second-chance-act/. Office of Justice Programs. (2024, April 30). Impacts of the Second Chance Act. https://www.ojp.gov/archive/news/ojp-blogs/safe-communities/from-the-vault/impacts-second-chance-act

³³ Couloute, L. (2018, August). Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people. Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html

³⁴ Gillespie, S., Chartoff, B., Hanson, D., & Cunningham, M. K. (2016, May 19). The first step toward breaking the homelessness-jail cycle. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/first-step-toward-breaking-homelessness-jail-cycle. Jacobs, L. A., & Gottlieb, A. (2020). The effect of housing circumstances on recidivism: evidence from a sample of people on probation in San Francisco. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 47(9), 1097–1115. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820942285. Lutze, F. E., Rosky, J. W., & Hamilton, Z. K. (2013). Homelessness and reentry: a multisite outcome evaluation of Washington state’s reentry housing program for high risk offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 41(4), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854813510164

³⁵ Fontaine, J. (2013). The role of supportive housing in successful reentry outcomes for disabled prisoners. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 15, 3. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol15num3/ch3.pdf.

Jacobs, L. A., & Gottlieb, A. (2020d). The effect of housing circumstances on recidivism: evidence from a sample of people on probation in San Francisco. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 47(9), 1097–1115. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820942285. Listwan, S. J., Hartman, J. L., & LaCourse, A. (2018). Impact of the MeckFUSE Pilot Project: Recidivism among the Chronically Homeless. Justice Evaluation Journal, 1(1), 96–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751979.2018.1478236. Lutze, F. E., Rosky, J. W., & Hamilton, Z. K. (2013). Homelessness and reentry: a multisite outcome evaluation of Washington state’s reentry housing program for high risk offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 41(4), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854813510164. Somers, J. M., Rezansoff, S. N., Moniruzzaman, A., Palepu, A., & Patterson, M. (2013). Housing First Reduces Re-offending among Formerly Homeless Adults with Mental Disorders: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial. PLoS ONE, 8(9), e72946. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072946.

³⁶ Binswanger, I. A., Stern, M. F., Deyo, R. A., Heagerty, P. J., Cheadle, A., Elmore, J. G., & Koepsell, T. D. (2007). Release from Prison — A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates. New England Journal of Medicine, 356(2), 157–165. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmsa064115

³⁷ Aslim, E. G., Mungan, M. C., & Yu, H. (2024). A welfare analysis of Medicaid and recidivism. Health Economics, 33(11), 2463–2507. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4876

³⁸ CSG Justice Center. (2025, February). Justice Reinvestment Initiative. https://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JRI_Fact_Sheet_022525_FINAL.pdf. Nelson, J. (2024, May 17). Bipartisan backing: Congress stands firm on key justice programs. CSG Justice Center. https://csgjusticecenter.org/2024/05/17/bipartisan-backing-congress-stands-firm-on-key-justice-programs/. The Pew Charitable Trusts. (2016, November). Bipartisan support for justice reinvestment legislation. https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2016/11/pspp_bipartisan_support_justice_reinvestment_legislation_fact_sheet-(2).pdf

³⁹ U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance. (2021). The Justice Reinvestment Initiative: A guide for States. https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/JRI-Guide-for-States.pdf

⁴⁰ Justice Reinvestment Initiative. (n.d.). JRI States. https://justicereinvestmentinitiative.org/jri-states. Justice Reinvestment Initiative. (n.d.). JRI Policies. https://justicereinves.wpengine.com/jri-policies/

⁴¹ Marcellin, C., & Matei, A. (2020, June 25). Improving accountability to victims through state justice reinvestment. Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/improving-accountability-victims-through-state-justice-reinvestment

⁴² Justice Reinvestment Initiative. (n.d.). About JRI. https://justicereinvestmentinitiative.org/about-jri/

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance. (2022). Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. https://bja.ojp.gov/doc/archive_jag-fact-sheet-2-2022.pdf

⁴⁵ Justice for All Reauthorization Act of 2016, Pub. L. 114—324, 130 Stat. 1948.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, Pub. L. 113—242, 128 Stat. 2860.

⁴⁸ Bondi, P. (2025, April 23). The Department of Justice has started cutting millions of dollars in wasteful grants. Some of the greatest hits include: X. https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/1915184169069818356.

Rabinowitz, H., & Freeman, D. (2025, April 24). Justice Department axes hundreds of grants that help crime victims and fight opioid abuse. CNN. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/04/24/politics/justice-department-crime-victims-opioid-abuse. The White House. (2025). Cuts to woke programs.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-to-Woke-Programs-Fact-Sheet.pdf.

⁴⁹ The White House. (2025). Cuts to woke programs. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-to-Woke-Programs-Fact-Sheet.pdf

⁵⁰ OJP has made 14,700 awards since fiscal year 2021, 441 of which were from NIJ, according to OJP’s award data webpage.

⁵¹ Office of Justice Programs. OJP awards since FY2021 by solicitation [Data set]. https://charts.ojp.usdoj.gov/t/public/views/OJPAwardsDashboardallFiscalYears/AwardsByState?%3Aembed=y&%3Aiid=2&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y

⁵² Associated Press. (2025, April 29). Layoffs, closures and gaps in oversight expected after hundreds of DOJ grants are canceled. US News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-jersey/articles/2025-04-29/layoffs-closures-and-gaps-in-oversight-expected-after-hundreds-of-doj-grants-are-canceled. Barber, R. (2025, April 25). Without DOJ funding, community violence intervention programs face uncertainty. Nonprofit Quarterly. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/without-doj-funding-community-violence-intervention-programs-face-uncertainty/. Brier, B. (2025, April 29). Layoffs, shutdowns at NJ violence intervention programs. NJ Spotlight News. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/04/us-justice-department-cuts-funding-immediate-impact-nj-violence-intervention-programs-layoffs-shutdowns/

⁵³ Lopez, E. & Boxerman, B. (2025). Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Year-End 2024 Update. Council on Criminal Justice. https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-year-end-2024-update/. Asher, J. (2025, April 21). Crime is likely down an enormous amount so far in 2025. Jeff-alytics. https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormous

Print this page