Assistance program
Missing and Unidentified Human Remains (MUHR) Program
$14.7 Million committed in FY2023–FY2026
- Agency
- Justice, Department of, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 16.050
- What it does
- Administered by the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Missing and Unidentified Human Remains (MUHR) Program provides funds to enable eligible entities to improve the reporting, transportation, forensic testing, and identification of missing persons and unidentified human remains, including migrants. This program furthers the U.S. Department of Justice’s mission of increasing public safety by providing resources to locate and identify missing persons and unidentified human remains in the United States. The MUHR Program augments and complements the services available through the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), National Institute of Justice National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) Program. NamUs is a free, national, centralized repository and resource center for cases involving missing persons, unidentified human remains, and unclaimed persons. The MUHR Program fills a gap in the national field by providing federal resources directly to state and local jurisdictions. As a result, the MUHR Program helps jurisdictions become more self-sufficient in reducing their backlog of missing persons and unidentified human remains cases. Performance Measure 1: The number of missing persons cases (including migrants) processed (all purpose areas); and, Performance Measure 2: The number of unidentified human remains cases (including migrants) processed (all purpose areas).
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- •Accredited, publicly funded, Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) forensic laboratories •Medical examiner offices •Accredited, publicly funded toxicology laboratories •Accredited, publicly funded crime laboratories •Publicly funded university forensic anthropology laboratories •Nonprofit organizations that have working collaborative agreements with state and county forensic offices—including medical examiners, coroners, and justices of the peace—for entry of data into CODIS, The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), or both.
- Authorized by
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments