CHICAGO— The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) today announced two funding opportunities to support Restore, Reinvest, and Renew (R3) programming in historically underserved communities across Illinois. Grants are available for community assessment and planning initiatives and service delivery.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s proposed fiscal year 2021 budget includes a $35 million R3 appropriation from the General Revenue Fund to ICJIA for grants, awards, and administrative costs. A total of $31.5 million is available for grants, including approximately $28.3 million to support service delivery and $3.1 million for assessment and planning.
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The Cannabis Regulation and Trust Act legalized adult-use cannabis in Illinois on January 1, 2020. In addition to limiting enforcement and prosecution of cannabis-related offenses and providing a source of state revenue, the Act established the R3 program. R3 provides 25% of tax cannabis revenues in grants to support communities impacted by economic disinvestment, violence, and the severe and multilayered harm caused by the war on drugs.
“The R3 program is a critical step towards repairing the harms caused by the failed war on drugs and decades of economic disinvestment,” said Lieutenant Governor and R3 Board Chair Juliana Stratton. “Equity is one of the administration’s core values, and we are ensuring that state funding reaches organizations doing critical work in neighborhoods most impacted by the war on drugs.”
Funded programs will offer evidence-based, promising, or innovative practices within at least one of five R3 Program Priority Areas: civil legal aid; economic development; re-entry from the criminal justice system; violence prevention; and youth development.
“In developing these funding opportunities, the focus has been on equity in opportunity at the community level,” said Acting ICJIA Director Jason Stamps. “This program will start to close those gaps in areas most hard hit by gun violence, unemployment, and criminal justice system overuse. To do so, we are looking to R3 communities for proposals of programs and strategies they identify to best address their needs and challenges.”
The negative consequences of the failed war on drugs have been felt far more severely by poor and disadvantaged communities throughout the state—mostly communities of color. The R3 program seeks to repair this disparity by ensuring that the programs funded are equitable and provide the needed services and funding in areas that have suffered the most harm.
Areas eligible for funding were identified using community-level data on gun injury, child poverty, unemployment, and state prison commitments and returns, combined with disproportionately impacted areas previously identified by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (View map of eligible areas).
An R3 Working Group of criminal justice practitioners and policy experts provided guidance to ensure an equitable application and funding process. "The time to act is now. The funding is desperately needed for our communities to continue our collective healing," said Sharone Mitchell, Director of the Illinois Justice Project and member of the working group.
Organizations that serve residents of—or are based in—designated eligible R3 zones will be able to apply. Eligible organizations include nonprofit organizations, local units of government, tax-exempt faith-based organizations, businesses, and other community organizations. Application materials with instructions on how to apply are available here: https://r3.illinois.gov/. The deadline for all applications is Monday, July 20, 2020.
To ease the application process and increase access to available grant funding, ICJIA offers technical assistance to organizations via online workshops.
ICJIA is dedicated to improving the administration of criminal justice through work in the areas of grants administration, research and analysis, policy and planning, and information systems and technology. Visit www.icjia.state.il.us.
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