Grants, Grants, Grants

The bulk of my time this week has been spent on grant proposals. The Bureau of Justice Assistance has released a far-ranging request-for-proposals and we are busy formulating new ideas in response. These include investigating the collateral consquences of drug courts, exploring the possibility of creating a consolidated resource center that would share clinical resources among different types problem-solving courts, dreaming up new ways to expand the capacity of drug courts, convening a roundtable on reentry court in concert with John Jay College, holding a major community court conference among other ideas. While I am excited about what we've come up with, my enthusiasm is muted just a bit by the knowledge that this will be an intensely competitive process. BJA has very little money to spend and there will be hundreds of proposals for them to sift through. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed. In the meantime, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the hard work of the development team. Jill, Maggie, Amy and Christa have managed to keep up their usual good cheer even in the face of demanding, non-negotiable deadlines. Kudos to them and to everyone else involved in cranking out our proposals.