Congress approves FY 2010 Omnibus Spending Bill
Earlier this week the Senate approved the FY 2010 Omnibus Appropriations Bill (already passed in the House) that will govern spending at the Departments of Justice, Education, Defense, Housing and more. Included in that bill was $114 million to the Department of Justice for prisoner reentry, including $100 million for the Second Chance Act, a $75 million increase over last year's funding.
Highlighted among the Second Chance Act programs is $15 million for mentoring grants to nonprofit organizations. Now, the bulk of this money will likely be for mentoring programs for reentering adult offenders, but I'd guess that there will be a juvenile offender component as well (there was in FY 2009).
There may be other mentoring opportunities through other federal agencies contained in the bill, but that was the first mentoring-related opportunity that caught our eye.
You can learn more about the bill here:
- A good overview of the reentry-related funding
- The full text of the Dept. of Justice section, including the Second Chance Act.