DOJ awards federal financial assistance to state and local governments, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, tribal jurisdictions, and educational institutions to help prevent crime, assist victims of crime, and promote innovative law enforcement efforts. Federal financial assistance can take the form of discretionary grants, formula grants, cooperative agreements, and payment programs, which all are generally referred to as grants. Grant programs are generally created by statute and funded through annual appropriations. As such, Congress has a central role in determining the scope and nature of federal financial assistance programs. In addition, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) establishes general guidance which governs administration of all such federal financial assistance and DOJ has flexibility in how to administer assistance that is discretionary in nature. In fiscal year 2010, DOJ provided direct grant funding to nearly 11,000 grantees.assistance. We reviewed all 253 of the fiscal year 2010 grant solicitations that OJP, OVW, and the COPS Office published on their respective websites and found overlap across 10 justice areas—as table 2 illustrates. These solicitations announced funding available to grantees for criminal and juvenile justice activities, including direct assistance for crime victims and the hiring of police officers. These solicitations also announced funding available for grantees to collect criminal justice data, conduct research, or provide related training and technical assistance. We developed these 10 categories of justice areas after reviewing comparable justice areas identified within OJP’s CrimeSolutions.gov website, which OJP officials stated covers a variety of justice topics, including some topic areas that OVW and the COPS Office fund; OJP’s Fiscal Year 2010 Program Plan; and other materials from OVW and the COPS Office, such as justice program themes from their respective websites. Within the justice areas, a variety of activities—including research, direct service provision, or technical assistance—can be conducted. We examined the purpose areas of the 253 grant solicitations and then categorized them by justice area. In conducting this analysis, we recognize that overlapping grant programs across common programmatic areas result in part from authorizing statutes, and that overlap itself may not be problematic. However, the existence of overlapping grant programs is an indication that agencies should increase their visibility of where their funds are going and coordinate to ensure that any resulting duplication in grant award funding is purposeful rather than unnecessary. Overlap and the associated risk of unnecessary duplication occur throughout the government, as we have reported previously, and are not isolated to DOJ. However, when coupled with consistent programmatic coordination, the risk of unnecessary duplication can be diminished. As table 2 illustrates, we found overlap across the various DOJ grant programs. For example, 56 of DOJ’s 253 grant solicitations—or more than 20 percent—were providing grant funds available for activities related to victim assistance or to support the research and prevention of violence against women. Eighteen of these 56 programs were administered by offices other than OVW and OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime. In addition, more than 50 percent of all grant solicitations provided funding that could be used in support of the same three justice areas—victim assistance, technology and forensics, and juvenile justice— indicating concentrated and overlapping efforts. The justice area with the least overlap was juvenile justice, with 30 of 33 grant programs administered by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. There are some instances in which overlap occurs because of the statute that established programs. Further, we recognize that overlap among DOJ’s grant programs may be desirable because such overlap can enable DOJ’s granting agencies to leverage multiple funding streams to serve a single justice purpose. However, coordination across the administering granting agencies is critical for such leveraging to occur. In the section below, we discuss the ways in which overlapping grant programs increase the risk of unnecessarily duplicative grant awards for the same or similar purposes. In subsequent sections, we discuss the steps DOJ has taken to enhance coordination and some ways in which DOJ’s efforts can be improved. We found that in some instances, DOJ’s granting agencies awarded multiple grants to the same grantees for the same or similar purposes. Applicants can apply directly to DOJ for funding through a variety of grant programs that DOJ announces annually. Recipients of such grant awards are referred to as prime grantees. Since many of DOJ’s grant programs allow prime grantees to award subgrants, applicants also can apply directly to a prime grantee for award funding. As a result, prime grantees receiving money from DOJ through one funding stream also can be subgrantees receiving money from a prime grantee through another funding stream. If an applicant, either as a prime grantee or as a subgrantee, receives multiple grant awards from overlapping programs, the risk of unnecessary duplication increases since the applicant may receive funding from more than one source for the same or similar purpose without DOJ being aware that this situation exists. Such duplication may be unnecessary if, for example, the total funding received exceeds the applicant’s need, or if neither granting agency was aware of the original funding decision. After reviewing a sample of 26 grant applications from recipients who received funds from grant programs we identified as having similar purpose areas, we found instances where applicants used the same or similar language to apply for multiple streams of funding. For example, one grant recipient applied for funding to reduce child endangerment through cyber investigations from both the COPS Office’s Child Sexual and OJP’s Internet Crimes Against Children Predator (CSPP) Program(ICAC) program. In both of these applications, the applicant stated that it planned to use the grants to increase the number of investigations in the state, provide training for cyber crime investigations, serve as a forensic resource for the state, and establish an Internet safety program. Further, included in this applicant’s proposed budgets for both funding streams were plans to purchase equipment, such as forensic computers and the same specialized software to investigate Internet crimes against children. Another grant recipient from a different jurisdiction also applied for funding from OJP and the COPS Office programs to support the same types of investigations. In a third instance, an applicant received fiscal year 2010 grant funding for planned sexual assault victim services from both OJP’s Office for Victims of Crime and OVW. The applicant used similar language in both applications, noting that it intended to use the funding to support child victim services through its child advocacy center. After we shared these examples with DOJ, DOJ officials followed up with the grant recipients involved and reported to us that the grantees were not using awarded funds for duplicative purposes—which DOJ defines as grantees using funds to pay for the exact same item. However, such follow-up for the purpose of assessing duplication is not a routine practice for DOJ. Further, DOJ’s narrow definition of duplication curtails it from assessing the use of funds for the same or a similar overall purpose on a grant project. In fiscal year 2010, DOJ’s three granting agencies awarded nearly 11,000 prime grant awards, but officials told us that they do not consider the flow of grant funds to subgrantees when making grant award decisions. Because DOJ does not have visibility of the flow of funds to these recipients, agency officials were not positioned to tell us what activities, or for what purposes, the subgrantees were spending their federal funds. Thus, to obtain more information, we surveyed JAG SAAs, who are responsible for managing the subgrants they make, to obtain information related to the purpose areas of their funding. In our survey, we asked the JAG SAAs if they or their subgrantees used grant funding in fiscal year 2010 for key justice areas such as funding sex offender registry notification systems; correctional officer salaries, and sexual assault services; purchasing bullet-resistant vests; and hiring police officers. DOJ supports all of these areas through JAG, as well as through targeted grant programs specifically addressing each of these topics. On the basis of survey responses, we found several instances where SAAs reported that JAG funds were used to support activities that could have been funded through other DOJ grants. For instance, 11 of 50 responding SAAs, or 22 percent, reported that they or their subgrantees used JAG funding to support correctional officer salaries. Further, 23 of the 50 SAAs, or nearly 50 percent, reported that they or their subgrantees used JAG funding to hire police officers, even though a separate DOJ program dedicates funding exclusively to hiring law enforcement personnel. The COPS Office hiring grant awarded to this county was for fiscal year 2009. COPS Office hiring grants last up to 3 years, and the county used the grant in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 as well. These grants support the hiring or the rehiring of career law enforcement officers to increase community policing and crime prevention strategies. received funding for drug court–assisted substance abuse treatment and mental health counseling through both a JAG program subaward and a grant directly from OJP’s Adult Drug Court Grant Program. Officials from one of these counties informed us that they received so much DOJ funding from the two grant programs that it exceeded the county’s need and they planned to return a portion to DOJ. The IG has previously identified the risk of OJP and the COPS Office funding duplicative grant awards. For example, in 2003, the IG identified duplication between the COPS Office Hiring Program and the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program, the predecessor to the JAG grant program. The IG reported that while the COPS Hiring Grant program is required to advance community policing, the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program grants are sometimes used for the same or similar purposes. According to the IG, in such cases the grants are duplicative. In 2010, the IG reported that it had identified potential overlap between the COPS Office Hiring Recovery Program and OJP’s JAG Formula Program and Edward Byrne Competitive Grant Program.