Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies

BJS Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies

Invests research teams and institutions for BJS Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies in cross-sector innovation.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the statutory primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, periodically funds a national Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLETA) to document the structure, staffing, and curricula of the institutions that train American law enforcement officers. BJS was established in 1979 under the Justice Systems Improvement Act and operates within the Office of Justice Programs. The FY25 CLETA solicitation (O-BJS-2025-172532) funds a single grantee to design and administer the census instrument, collect data from training academies across the country, and produce a public-use statistical report covering cadet characteristics, training duration, curricula content, staff profiles, and program structure.

The award is structured as a cooperative agreement, meaning BJS remains an active collaborator in methodology and dissemination. Eligible entities include nonprofits, universities, and research organizations; for-profit firms and individuals are excluded. Applicant registration must be in the United States. Specific award amounts are published in the PDF solicitation attached to the opportunity page; the index listing does not disclose a dollar figure. The FY25 JustGrants deadline was February 19, 2026, and this cycle is now closed. BJS runs the CLETA as a periodic (not annual) census, with timing driven by program need.

Strong candidates are research organizations or universities with prior experience administering national surveys of law enforcement agencies, familiarity with BJS data standards and the JustGrants portal, and existing relationships with state-level training academy associations. Applicants should demonstrate the capacity to achieve high response rates from a diverse population of academies — from large state-level facilities to small municipal programs — and to deliver data products that meet BJS's publication and confidentiality requirements.