Termination of bipartisan Department of Justice grants appropriated by Congress recently drew the attention of leaders and organizations across the country. These cuts occurred as states were showing how to reduce recidivism and improve justice system responses to violent crime and behavioral health crises. According to the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s nationwide recidivism report, state-level reincarceration rates are 23 percent lower nationwide since 2008.
In April, the Trump Administration terminated 373 grants, totaling about $820 million, from the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP). Most of these terminations occurred abruptly, in the middle of the grant periods, before any results could be realized, thus wasting funds.
The Council of State Governments Justice Center issued the following statement:
“State and local leaders are making great progress in stopping the revolving door of our prisons. Federal assistance and leadership [have] been key to improving outcomes, especially through the Second Chance Act, reauthorized by President Trump in 2018. These cuts impact programs with a proven track record of helping law enforcement, corrections leaders, and policymakers in all 50 states tackle recidivism, provide crisis services for individuals with mental illnesses and substance use disorders, protect victims, and use data to make our justice system more efficient and effective.
We urge the Department of Justice to restore funding for these programs to help state and local governments reduce crime and recidivism.”
The Trump Administration eliminated grants totalling around $92 million in funding for strategic planning and enhancements to justice system operations. These cuts included funding for the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), a program with a long history of bipartisan support. Through JRI, state leaders work with experts to target justice system inefficiencies that drive up correctional populations and spending.
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. 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. At the same time, the initiative reports that crime in participating states declined by 38 percent on average from 2008 to 2023. 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.
The Administration made deep cuts to grants that support research, evaluation, and data collection, funded mainly by OJP’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The terminations also include assessment 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 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 suggest declines have continued into the early months of this year.
An academic consensus says that research on violence has long suggested that a dollar spent on policing reduces violence less than a dollar spent on intervention. A specific example of the success of the DOJ funding programs aimed at prevention and intervention occurred in Baltimore. Their approach included a partnership of the police, the hospitals, the jails, the schools, the social services teams, the state government, and the federal government. Using American Rescue Plan Act funds in combination with other federal grants, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and community violence-intervention programs from the Department of Justice, city leaders developed a crime and violence prevention program that saw a historic reduction in violent crime. The city saw a 20 percent decrease in homicides in 2023 and a further 23 percent decline in 2024.
The Trump administration closed the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention on the first day he took office. Three months later, the Department of Justice cut the $300m allocated to community violence-intervention grants in half, including those in Baltimore.
Thus, the Trump administration is eliminating success and wasting money in the process.
