Funding for prosecutors and their law enforcement partners to close violent cold cases where a suspect DNA profile already exists. Covers the investigative, forensic, and prosecutorial work needed to move an identified profile through to charging and trial.
Open now. Each grant page walks through the steps and dates:
Apply directly on grants.gov. Prosecuting agencies apply on their own behalf; a law enforcement agency may apply only with an engaged prosecutorial entity as a partner.
State and local prosecuting agencies, and law enforcement agencies applying with an engaged prosecutorial partner. Tribal governments and tribal organizations are also eligible. Other units of local government include towns, boroughs, parishes, villages, and other general purpose political subdivisions of a state.
FY2025: 35 applications received, no awards made yet.
Awards per year: FY2021 14 · FY2022 15 · FY2023 15 · FY2024 15 · FY2025 none yet
0 of 15 awards with a filed description planned equipment purchases. Below, what the applications themselves say the money was for.
Counts are awards, from each award’s filed description, read by AI and checked word for word against it (recipient types also from recipients’ names). Planned uses, not confirmed purchases; most descriptions name no specific product.
Round totals: DOJ Office of Justice Programs award data. Award lists: USAspending.gov, plus DOJ’s own award list for rounds USAspending is missing.
General advice for this program, not taken from the notice. The notice’s own review criteria are what reviewers actually score, so check these against it.
BJA withholds 75 percent of the award until it approves your inventory of eligible cold cases, submitted on BJA's own COLD Inventory Template. Only cases on that approved list can be charged to the grant. Start counting and documenting cases before you write the narrative, not after award.
This program funds violent cold cases where a DNA profile from a suspect has already been developed. Demonstrate, with counts, that you have a real population of such cases. Consult the FY26 COLD Forensic Appendix for BJA's exact definitions before you classify anything.
A law enforcement agency is only eligible with an engaged prosecutorial entity. Document the prosecutor's role and commitment. Where two or more agencies share the work, only one applies and the rest come in as subrecipients, not co-applicants.
Goal 2 asks for strengthened partnerships among law enforcement, prosecutors, forensic experts, and victim services providers. Show the working relationships, not just letters of support, and describe the systematic case inventory and ongoing review process you will run.
Goal 3 asks for consistent communication with victims and families, access to support services, and meaningful participation in the process. Cold case notification is delicate work. Applications that name who does it and how are stronger than ones that treat it as an afterthought.
Budgeting analyst time, testing, or prosecution effort for cases that will not appear on the approved inventory puts that spending at risk. Scope the budget to the inventory.
This is a prosecution program, not a backlog program. Funding generic lab throughput with no linked prosecution strategy fits CEBR, not COLD. Apply to the right one, or to both separately.
A starting list, not the official one. Each notice ends with its own application checklist, and that is the list to work from once a round opens.
