Assistance program
Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program
$37.3 Million committed in FY2018–FY2025
- Agency
- Office of Justice Programs, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 16.571
- What it does
- To provide death benefits to the eligible survivors of federal, state, or local public safety officers whose deaths are the direct and proximate result of an injury sustained in the line of duty. Effective November 29, 1990, the Act also provides the same benefit to a public safety officer who has been permanently and totally disabled as the direct and proximate result of an injury sustained in the line of duty. Objective(s): • To provide death benefits to the eligible survivors of public safety officers whose deaths are the direct and proximate result of an injury sustained in the line of duty. • To provide disability benefits to public safety officers who have been permanently and totally disabled as the direct and proximate result of an injury sustained in the line of duty. Performance Measure 1: Number of death and disability claims determined Performance Measure 2: Number of death and disability claims filed.
- Who benefits
- The Public Safety Officers' Benefits (PSOB) Act, enacted in 1976, was designed to offer peace of mind to men and women seeking careers in public safety and to make a strong statement about the value American society places on the contributions of those who serve their communities in potentially dangerous circumstances. The PSOB Program provides a one-time financial benefit to the eligible survivors of public safety officers whose deaths are the direct and proximate result of a traumatic injury sustained in the line of duty. The benefit is determined by the date of the fatal or totally and permanently disabling injury and is adjusted annually for inflation. A table with the annually adjusted amounts is contained here: https://bja.ojp.gov/program/psob/resources/benefits-by-year
- Who applies
- Very generally, a public safety officer means an individual serving a public agency in an official capacity, with or without compensation, as a law enforcement officer, firefighter (including fire police) or chaplain, under certain conditions; as a candidate officer engaging in an activity or exercise, under certain conditions; as an employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) performing official duties of the agency in an area, under certain conditions; as an employee of a State, local, or tribal emergency management or civil defense agency performing official duties in cooperation with FEMA in an area, under certain conditions; as a member of a rescue squad or ambulance crew authorized or licensed by law and by the applicable agency or entity, under certain conditions; and as an employee or contractor of the Dept. of Energy who meets the definition of a nuclear materials courier, under certain conditions. For details, review the PSOB law and regulations at www.psob.gov
- Authorized by
- Public Safety Officers' Benefits Act of 1976, codified at 34 U.S.C. §§ 10281 – 10288 (as reclassified effective September 1, 2017), formerly classified to sections 3796 – 3796c-3 of Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare.
- Public Law 117-328
- Program site
- https://bja.ojp.gov/program/psob ↗
Committed by fiscal year
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