Operational Oversights/Audits

LISC convened subgrantee organizations for a group workshop on administrative support. LISC provided the subgrantees an overview of LISC’s offerings as it relates to expending their administrative capabilities. The topics of this workshop included: Procurement Policy Development, Financial and Accounting Policies and Procedures, Staff Travel Policy, Equipment Purchased with Federal Funds.

CSG Justice Center staff met with the new policy advisor, Jeff Locke, to provide and overview and update of the ISI project and the law-enforcement/corrections brief. 

During this time period, NCSC project director and staff began exploring the capabilities of existing software for usability and compliance with grant requirements. The project director and staff also engaged in conversations regarding utilization of current software, time period for build-out, cost estimates, expectations, and annual costs. NCSC successfully engaged a vendor and staff is building out the tool to capture business processes, grantee/non-grantee support and deliverables under the cooperative agreement.

The CSG Justice Center and the American Institutes for Research held a second meeting to further discuss the transfer of the NRRC website files.
Items for discussion:

AIR will transfer all of these domains to CSG, including the vanity/placeholder/redirect URLs:
nationalreentryresourcecenter.org

cleanslateclearinghouse.org

reentrytoolkit.org

reentryweek.org

reentrymatters.org

buildsecondchances.org

The CSG Justice Center and the American Institutes for Research held a meeting to discuss the transfer of the NRRC website and projects. CSG Justice Center identified the files needed from AIR to facilitate a successful transition. Some of these included, websites for the NRRC, National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC), and the Clean Slate Clearinghouse; coding manuals for the NICCC and Clean Slate Clearinghouse; emal list and listserv.

The Federal Regulations governing the grant programs financially supported by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) require all grantees to monitor, at least once per grant cycle, all elements of their grant narrative against performance goals and compliance with administrative requirements. The purpose of LCCL's monitoring is to evaluate our community partners and their adherence to federal regulations and other policies and procedures relevant to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance (OJP-BJA).

Northern Cheyenne is a FY20 Adult Treatment Court - Tribal Healing to Wellness Court grantee. Mr. Jeff Kushner, Montana Treatment Court Coordinator, invited TLPI's Wellness Court Specialist Kristina Pacheco to participate in a 2-day Peer Review Process with Northern Cheyenne's Healing to Wellness Court. Day 1 consisted of team interviews and Day 2 included observations of staffing, status hearing, and participant focus groups. This review was led by Mr. Kushner and a summary report was share with Ms. Pacheco.

PRC staff will makes recommendations to PMO on what audits to select for peer review using a data-driven and name blind process. PRC staff work with peer reviewers who assess auditors' work utilizing a standardized scoring rubric. PRC deploys two reviewers for each peer review who conduct a rigorous examination of all the evidence and documentation relied upon by an auditor, to determine the extent to which they have made accurate compliance findings, and followed the methodological requirements defined in the PREA Auditor Handbook.

Disciplinary review is initiated by PMO when they identify significant issues with an auditor's work and/or practice.
Disciplinary processes include PRC staff supporting PMO's direct requests with detailed analysis of an auditor's work on multiple audits, including a review of all retained documentation for the reviewed audits and providing detailed memoranda to PMO regarding findings in those audits.

This period included the initiation of two new disciplinary cases.

Auditors identified in the peer review process and referred to peer mentoring by the PMO receive one-on-one coaching from DOJ-certified PREA auditors who are specially trained as peer mentors. Mentors receive intensive training to provide support and resources to a mentored auditor, as well as ongoing support by IJ staff. This targeted support provides auditors with a strong basis to improve their auditing practice and to deliver consistently high quality, reliable, objective, and comprehensive PREA audits.

From July to December 2023. eight auditors received peer mentoring.