Assistance program
Second Chance Act Reentry Initiative
$549.9 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Justice Programs, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements;Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 16.812
- What it does
- There are currently over 2.2 million individuals serving time in federal and state prisons, and millions of people cycle through local jails every year. Of those in state and federal prison, approximately 95 percent will be released and return to communities across the nation. A majority of these individuals have needs that, if unaddressed in prison, during the reentry process, and after release, will negatively impact their ability to live productive, pro-social, crime-free lives in the community. These needs include housing and employment challenges, relationship and family issues, and substance abuse and mental health problems. The Second Chance Act of 2007 (Pub. L. 110-199) helps to address these significant challenges by providing comprehensive responses to the significant number of incarcerated adults who are returning to communities from prison, jail, and juvenile residential facilities. Goal: The SCA supports state, local, and tribal governments and non-profit organizations in their work to reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for people returning from state and federal prisons, local jails, and juvenile facilities. Objective: Promote public safety by ensuring that the transition individuals make from prison and jail to the community is successful. These programming services sustain successful community reentry with coordination between government stakeholders including state prisons and local jails, federally recognized Indian Tribal Governments, community-based organizations, faith-based institutions, behavioral health providers, and unrealized stakeholders focusing on transitional support. Performance Measure 1: Number of people served in SCA programs; and, Performance Measure 2: Percent of participants successfully completing the SCA program.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- See current NOFO at the Office of Justice Programs website https://www.ojp.gov/funding/explore/current-funding-opportunities.
- 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