Assistance program
John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act
$16.2 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Justice Programs, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Discretionary)
- CFDA number
- 16.816
- What it does
- Goal: For all states and territories to encourage qualified individuals to enter and continue employment as local and state prosecutors and local, state, and federal public defenders. Objective: To offer an incentive to allow jurisdictions to attract and retain qualified local, state, and federal public defenders and local and state prosecutors who commit to extended employment in those roles and continue in that capacity for a minimum of 36 months; to support beneficiaries with the least ability to repay their loans; and to ensure fair allocation of repayment benefits among prosecutors and public defenders, and among employing entities. Performance Measure 1: Number of state and local prosecutors funded; and, Performance Measure 2: Number of state and local public defenders funded. Performance Measure 3: Number of federal public defenders funded.
- Who benefits
- Please see https://bja.ojp.gov/program/john-r-justice-jrj-program/overview under subtitle. The following individuals are eligible beneficiaries under the JRJ Program: 1) Prosecutor - full-time employee of a State or unit of local government (including tribal government) who is continually licensed to practice law and prosecutes criminal or juvenile delinquency cases at the state or local government level, 2) Public Defender – an attorney who is continually licensed to practice law and is a full-time employee of a State or unit of local government (including tribal government) who provides legal representation to indigent persons, 3) A full-time employee of a nonprofit organization operating under a contract with a State or unit of local government who devotes substantially all of the employee’s full-time employment to provide legal representation to indigent persons, and 4) A full-time Federal defender attorney in a defender org. that provides legal representation to indigent person.
- Who applies
- Applicants are limited to state and U.S. territory government agencies designated by their governor (or the mayor of the District of Columbia) to administer the JRJ Grant Program. The states, territories, and the District of Columbia will make loan payments directly to the institutions holding eligible beneficiary loans on behalf of eligible beneficiaries. See below for beneficiary eligibility information.
- Authorized by
- 34 U.S.C. § 10671
- Public Law 117-328
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