Access to Justice Prize: Closing the Rural Justice Gap
The Access to Justice Prize is a competition designed to advance innovative solutions that expand access to justice within rural jurisdictions and communities. Innovative solutions should increase access, accelerate change, and/or safeguard the integrity of civil or criminal legal systems. Ideas may seek to improve legal systems, processes, interactions, outcomes, or solve justice problems within rural areas.
Examples include, but are not limited to:
- Expanding access to legal representation, legal assistance, or legal information
- Utilizing alternatives to counsel or other innovative legal assistance models
- Breaking down barriers to accessing legal systems, including barriers disproportionately faced by rural Americans, like lack of proximity to a courthouse, ability to travel, or access to broadband
- Simplifying legal processes, systems, forms, or language
- Reducing disparities among those navigating, or impacted by, legal systems
- Reducing the need for interaction with civil and criminal legal systems or developing efficient alternatives to justice processes
- Reducing any harmful effects of legal systems
- Accessing and utilizing technology to expedite and promote efficiency within courts and legal systems
- Advancing cost-saving strategies
- Expanding language access, utilizing written, spoken, and sign languages, as well as auxiliary communication aids and services
- Expanding access for people with disabilities
- Expanding access for specific rural populations, such as Tribal communities, low-income communities, communities of color, or other historically underserved communities
- Identifying and establishing innovative cross-sector, cross-agency, or otherwise unique partnerships to expand access to legal systems
- Reducing financial or economic barriers to accessing legal systems or economic conditions imposed on those impacted by legal systems
- Improving legal or other supports for victims and/or survivors
- Expanding access to legal systems by taking court/legal processes or assistance to communities, outside of the courtroom
- Expanding access to basic and collateral needs for those in rural communities who interact with legal systems, including, for example, housing, food, and employment
- Promoting efficiency of systems or processes through customer or user experience strategies
Eligible applicants:
- 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations
- Institutions of higher education
- Units of local, state, tribal, and territorial government, including courts, public defender offices, prosecutorial agencies, and law enforcement entities
Applicants must:
- If a private entity, be incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United States
- Not be a federal entity or federal employee acting within the scope of their employment
- Not be an employee of the Department of Justice (DOJ) acting in their personal or official capacity
- Not be an individual or organization that is currently suspended or debarred by the federal government
- Not be any party involved with the design, production, execution, judging, or distribution of the Challenge or the immediate family of such a party
Up to 5 applicants will be selected as finalists to refine their projects and to compete for the Grand Prize. Each finalist will receive $5,000.
The Grand Prize winner will receive $50,000.
Follow the instructions on the how to enter tab. Submissions must be completed online through the Challenge.gov system.
Additional information:An applicant webinar is scheduled for February 11, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Watch the program website for participation information to be posted.
For complete information about funding programs, including your
application status, please contact funders directly. Summaries are provided
for your convenience only. RHIhub does not take part in application processes
or monitor application status.