DOJ to stop using outside experts to help vet competitive grant applicants

Washington \u00e2\u0080\u0094 The Justice Department is scrapping its longtime practice of hiring outside experts to help review and rank competitive grant applications submitted by law enforcement offices, victim services groups and research institutions, a move that some fear could harm the integrity of the selection process and hinder efforts to ensure the money is well-spent, multiple sources told CBS News.The Justice Department\u0027s Office of Justice Programs, or OJP, has for decades relied on a peer review program to help it select winners each year for its competitive pool of grant funds that get awarded to state and local governments, nonprofit victims services groups and criminal justice researchers.The DOJ\u0027s Office on Violence Against Women, or OVW, a smaller separate grant office, has also used peer reviewers for its competitive awards.The Justice Department awards billions of dollars in federal grants each year. While some of those are doled out based on formulas such as population and crime rates, another bucket of them are competitively awarded.\u00a0Some of DOJ\u0027s most popular competitive awards are used to fund projects by law enforcement agencies or to support organizations that assist victims of sexual assault, human trafficking and domestic violence.\u00a0Competitive grants are also awarded to universities that undertake studies that help inform best practices for the fields of law enforcement and victim services providers.The peer review program, which is modeled after a grant review process created by the National Institutes of Health that is considered the gold standard, entails hiring independent subject matter experts who are tasked with reviewing, scoring and ranking grant applications.\u00a0They work to ensure that the proposals are feasible, meet the government\u0027s criteria and that their budgets can adequately cover the work being performed.Although peer reviewers\u0027 recommendations are nonbinding, the process has been utilized for decades to ensure that competitive grants are awarded fairly and impartially.\u00a0Peer review "is one of the tools that the government could use to make good, sound, cost-effective decisions," said Kristina Rose, who previously served as director of the Office for Victims of Crime, an OJP office that awards grants to help support organizations that offer services for the victims of crime.She added that eliminating peer review is a blow in particular to the National Institute of Justice, which funds criminal justice research projects that are highly specialized and contain complex methodologies.\u00a0"If NIJ doesn\u0027t have peer reviewers, that will diminish them in the eyes of the scientific community," Rose said.A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that it is planning to formally end its peer review program for competitive grants."Peer review has become an increasingly inefficient and outdated process that outsources a core function of our grantmaking process to individuals outside the Department who may not have insight into this Administration\u0027s goals and priorities or a reason to pursue them," a Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News.The Justice Department\u0027s peer review program will formally end in the fall, the sources said.The peer review program for OJP and OVW is currently administered through two contracts with a company known as BETAH and its subcontractor, Leidos.Going forward, staff at the OVW and OJP who are responsible for managing grant awards will now be tasked with conducting internal peer reviews of the applications for all competitive awards, the sources told CBS News.In 2025, the use of outside peer reviewers was temporarily stopped, and OJP staff were ordered to do it themselves, even though many people had no expertise and had never conducted peer review, sources said. Sources described the process at the time as chaotic and stressful, with some people working late hours to complete the task.Eventually, the use of external peer reviewers was restored.A Leidos spokesperson said the company and its predecessor corporations have a "longstanding history supporting DOJ peer review activities" dating back to the mid-1980s for OJP and decades for OVW. The spokesperson said its contracts with OJP and OVW are currently active, with the OJP one running through Nov. 1 under a bridge order.The decision internally was made as an attempt to cut costs for the Justice Department and to bring more expertise in-house, one of the sources said. The DOJ\u0027s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which gives out competitive awards to law enforcement agencies, has been phasing out the use of peer reviewers since 2019, the source added.The Justice Department spokesperson noted that the COPS office had already eliminated peer review "many years ago" and nevertheless has managed to "process grant applications and awards with speed and efficiency while maintaining alignment with the Make America Safe Again mission.""Bringing this function in-house also saves taxpayer dollars by cutting out unnecessary outside contractors," the spokesperson added.But the increased workload comes at a time when OJP\u0027s staffing level is already down by approximately several hundred employees, one source said, and it is still struggling to finalize some grants for fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30, 2025. They are also in the process of working to finalize fiscal 2026 awards before Sept. 30, while also rolling out some $3 billion in new grants required by last year\u0027s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.Moreover, some fear that eliminating outside experts from the review process could further risk politicizing how grants are awarded at a time when the White House has already directly intervened in the grantmaking process across the federal government."Grantmaking for victims services should not be based on political goals, but on best practices and demonstrable impact for victims and s...