Assistance program
Paul Coverdell Forensic Sciences Improvement Grant Program
$188.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Ojp Bureau of Justice Assistance, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants;Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 16.742
- What it does
- Goal(s): The Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program (the Coverdell Program) awards grants to states and units of local government to help improve the quality and timeliness of forensic science and medical examiner/coroner services. (Proposed, from BJA website) Objective(s): The objectives of the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Program are to: 1. Carry out all or a substantial part of a program intended to improve the quality and timeliness of forensic science or medical examiner/coroner’s office services, including those services provided by laboratories operated by the State and those operated by units of local government within the state; 2. Eliminate a backlog in the analysis of forensic science evidence, including, among other things, a backlog with respect to firearms examination, latent prints, impression evidence, toxicology, digital evidence, fire evidence, controlled substances, forensic pathology, questioned documents, and trace evidence; 3. Train, assist, and employ forensic laboratory personnel and medicolegal death investigators, as needed to eliminate such a backlog; 4. Address emerging forensic science issues (such as statistics, contextual bias, and uncertainty of measurement) and emerging forensic science technology (such as high throughput automation, statistical software, and new types of instrumentation); 5. Educate and train forensic pathologists; and 6. Fund medicolegal death investigation systems to facilitate accreditation of medical examiner and coroner offices and certification of medicolegal death investigators. Performance Measure 1: Number of backlogged cases analyzed with Coverdell funds; and, Performance Measure 2: Number of forensics and medical examiner personnel trained.
- Who benefits
- Eligible applicants must be State or local (i.e., county and municipal) governments. The purpose of this solicitation is to request applications for grants from State and units of local government to improve the quality and timeliness of forensic science and medical examiner services and/or to eliminate backlogs in the analysis of forensic evidence, including firearms examination, latent prints, impression evidence, toxicology, digital evidence, fire evidence, controlled substances, forensic pathology, questioned documents, and trace evidence for criminal justice purposes in state and local forensic laboratories. Any state/local government entity performing forensic science services is considered a “forensic science laboratory.†Medical examiner and coroner offices are considered to be forensic science laboratories for the purposes of this solicitation.
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