2026-08-18T11:42:12-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿——多名消息人士向哥伦比亚广播公司新闻透露，美国司法部正在废除长期以来聘请外部专家协助审查和排名执法部门、受害者服务机构及研究机构提交的竞争性拨款申请的做法，此举引发部分人士担忧，可能损害遴选程序的公正性，影响确保拨款得到合理使用的工作。
美国司法部司法项目办公室（OJP）数十年来一直依赖同行评审程序，每年从竞争性拨款池中选出受助方，受助对象包括州和地方政府、非营利性受害者服务机构以及刑事司法研究人员。
美国司法部妇女暴力问题办公室（OVW）作为一个规模较小的独立拨款部门，也为其竞争性拨款项目聘请了同行评审员。
美国司法部每年发放数十亿美元的联邦拨款。其中部分拨款依据人口、犯罪率等公式发放，另一部分则通过竞争性程序授予。
司法部部分最受欢迎的竞争性拨款项目用于资助执法机构的项目，或支持为性侵犯、人口贩运和家庭暴力受害者提供帮助的组织。
竞争性拨款也会授予那些开展研究、为执法和受害者服务领域提供最佳实践指导的大学。
该同行评审程序效仿了美国国立卫生研究院设立的拨款评审流程，后者被视为行业金标准。具体做法是聘请独立的主题专家，负责审查、评分和排名拨款申请。
这些专家的工作是确保提案切实可行、符合政府标准，且预算能够充分覆盖拟开展的工作。
尽管同行评审员的建议不具有约束力，但该程序已被使用数十年，以确保竞争性拨款得到公平、公正的发放。
“同行评审是政府能够用来做出优质、合理且符合成本效益决策的工具之一，”克里斯蒂娜·罗斯说道，她曾担任受害者犯罪办公室主任，该办公室隶属于司法项目办公室，负责发放拨款支持为犯罪受害者提供服务的组织。
她补充道，取消同行评审对美国国家司法研究所尤其不利，该机构资助的刑事司法研究项目高度专业化，研究方法复杂。
“如果国家司法研究所没有同行评审员，科学界对它的评价将会降低，”罗斯说。
一名司法部发言人向哥伦比亚广播公司新闻证实，司法部计划正式终止其竞争性拨款的同行评审程序。
“同行评审已成为一个效率越来越低且过时的流程，将我们拨款流程的核心职能外包给司法部外部人员，这些人可能不了解本届政府的目标和优先事项，也没有动力去实现这些目标，”一名司法部发言人告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。
消息人士称，司法部的同行评审项目将于今年秋季正式终止。
目前，司法项目办公室和妇女暴力问题办公室的同行评审项目通过与两家公司签订的两份合同管理，分别是BETAH公司及其分包商莱多斯公司（Leidos）。
消息人士表示，未来，负责管理拨款的司法项目办公室和妇女暴力问题办公室工作人员将承担起对所有竞争性拨款申请进行内部同行评审的任务。
消息人士称，2025年，外部同行评审工作曾暂时停止，司法项目办公室工作人员被要求自行完成评审，尽管许多人没有相关专业知识，也从未开展过同行评审工作。当时的流程被描述为混乱且压力巨大，部分人员加班加点完成任务。后来，外部同行评审工作得以恢复。
莱多斯公司的一名发言人表示，该公司及其前身企业“长期支持司法部的同行评审活动”，其中为司法项目办公室提供服务的历史可追溯至20世纪80年代中期，为妇女暴力问题办公室提供服务的历史则长达数十年。该发言人表示，公司与司法项目办公室和妇女暴力问题办公室的合同目前仍有效，其中与司法项目办公室的合同根据临时订单将持续到11月1日。
其中一名消息人士透露，司法部内部做出这一决定是为了削减成本，并在内部引入更多专业知识。消息人士补充称，负责向执法机构发放竞争性拨款的司法部社区警务办公室（COPS）自2019年以来已逐步停止使用同行评审员。
司法部发言人指出，社区警务办公室“多年前”就已经取消了同行评审，但仍成功“快速高效地处理拨款申请和发放工作，同时与‘让美国再次安全’的使命保持一致”。
“将这项职能纳入内部还可以省去不必要的外部承包商开支，为纳税人节省资金，”发言人补充道。
但一名消息人士表示，在工作量增加之际，司法项目办公室的人员编制已经减少了约数百人，该办公室仍在努力敲定2025财年的部分拨款，该财年已于2025年9月30日结束。该办公室还在9月30日前完成2026财年拨款的收尾工作，同时还在推进根据去年《One Big Beautiful Bill Act》法案要求发放的约30亿美元新拨款项目。
此外，部分人士担忧，在白宫已经直接干预联邦政府各地拨款流程的情况下，取消外部专家参与评审可能进一步加剧拨款发放过程的政治化。
“受害者服务领域的拨款不应基于政治目标，而应基于最佳实践以及对受害者和服务机构的切实影响，”美国自由网络联合执行主任让·布鲁格曼说道，她也曾担任过同行评审员。
“取消专业评审会让政府将注意力放在本届政府的目标上——而非国会的目标，不是受害者和幸存者的目标，不是项目本身的目标，而是现任政府的目标，”布鲁格曼说。
同行评审程序被认为是非政治性的。但多年来，也曾出现过一些争议，以及有人试图通过将政治因素注入拨款评选过程来破坏遴选程序的情况。
在特朗普总统第一任期内，代表司法项目办公室工作人员的工会向司法部监察长提起投诉，指控一名特朗普任命的官员审查同行评审员的社交媒体资料，以确保他们的观点与特朗普政府在包括移民问题在内的议题上的立场一致。
同期的另一起争议中，司法部面临内部投诉。此前，司法项目办公室前负责人拒绝向两家获得同行评审高分的组织发放拨款，反而将拨款授予了两家评分较低的组织——内华达州的“耶稣的妓女”组织和南卡罗来纳州的林肯·塔布曼基金会。
在“耶稣的妓女”组织一案中，该组织获得了一笔为期三年、金额为530,190美元的拨款，用于支持其为人口贩运受害者设立的安全屋。尽管此前内华达州发现该组织强迫受害者参加特定教堂的礼拜，并要求她们参与宗教活动作为获得住房的条件，该组织因此失去了内华达州受害者犯罪法案的资金，但仍获得了这笔拨款。
另一起可追溯至乔治·W·布什总统任期的争议中，青少年司法和犯罪预防办公室前主任向评分较低的组织发放了拨款，其中包括世界高尔夫基金会的“第一发球台”项目。
监察长后来的调查认定，该主任在向该组织推荐拨款前接受了该组织提供的免费高尔夫球局，违反了道德规则。直到两年后，他被传唤至国会回答有关拨款的问题时，才向该组织偿还了费用。
DOJ to stop using outside experts to help vet competitive grant applicants
2026-08-18T11:42:12-0400 / CBS News
Washington— The Justice Department is scrapping its longtime practice of hiring outside experts to help review and rank competitive grant applications submitted by law enforcement offices, victim services groups and research institutions, a move that some fear could harm the integrity of the selection process and hinder efforts to ensure the money is well-spent, multiple sources told CBS News.
The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, or OJP, has for decades relied on a peer review program to help it select winners each year for its competitive pool of grant funds that get awarded to state and local governments, nonprofit victims services groups and criminal justice researchers.
The DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women, or OVW, a smaller separate grant office, has also used peer reviewers for its competitive awards.
The Justice Department awards billions of dollars in federal grants each year. While some of those are doled out based on formulas such as population and crime rates, another bucket of them are competitively awarded.
Some of DOJ’s most popular competitive awards are used to fund projects by law enforcement agencies or to support organizations that assist victims of sexual assault, human trafficking and domestic violence.
Competitive grants are also awarded to universities that undertake studies that help inform best practices for the fields of law enforcement and victim services providers.
The peer review program, which is modeled after a grant review process created by the National Institutes of Health that is considered the gold standard, entails hiring independent subject matter experts who are tasked with reviewing, scoring and ranking grant applications.
They work to ensure that the proposals are feasible, meet the government’s criteria and that their budgets can adequately cover the work being performed.
Although peer reviewers’ recommendations are nonbinding, the process has been utilized for decades to ensure that competitive grants are awarded fairly and impartially.
Peer review “is one of the tools that the government could use to make good, sound, cost-effective decisions,” said Kristina Rose, who previously served as director of the Office for Victims of Crime, an OJP office that awards grants to help support organizations that offer services for the victims of crime.
She added that eliminating peer review is a blow in particular to the National Institute of Justice, which funds criminal justice research projects that are highly specialized and contain complex methodologies.
“If NIJ doesn’t have peer reviewers, that will diminish them in the eyes of the scientific community,” Rose said.
A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that it is planning to formally end its peer review program for competitive grants.
“Peer review has become an increasingly inefficient and outdated process that outsources a core function of our grantmaking process to individuals outside the Department who may not have insight into this Administration’s goals and priorities or a reason to pursue them,” a Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News.
The Justice Department’s peer review program will formally end in the fall, the sources said.
The peer review program for OJP and OVW is currently administered through two contracts with a company known as BETAH and its subcontractor, Leidos.
Going forward, staff at the OVW and OJP who are responsible for managing grant awards will now be tasked with conducting internal peer reviews of the applications for all competitive awards, the sources told CBS News.
In 2025, the use of outside peer reviewers was temporarily stopped, and OJP staff were ordered to do it themselves, even though many people had no expertise and had never conducted peer review, sources said. Sources described the process at the time as chaotic and stressful, with some people working late hours to complete the task.
Eventually, the use of external peer reviewers was restored.
A Leidos spokesperson said the company and its predecessor corporations have a “longstanding history supporting DOJ peer review activities” dating back to the mid-1980s for OJP and decades for OVW. The spokesperson said its contracts with OJP and OVW are currently active, with the OJP one running through Nov. 1 under a bridge order.
The decision internally was made as an attempt to cut costs for the Justice Department and to bring more expertise in-house, one of the sources said. The DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which gives out competitive awards to law enforcement agencies, has been phasing out the use of peer reviewers since 2019, the source added.
The Justice Department spokesperson noted that the COPS office had already eliminated peer review “many years ago” and nevertheless has managed to “process grant applications and awards with speed and efficiency while maintaining alignment with the Make America Safe Again mission.”
“Bringing this function in-house also saves taxpayer dollars by cutting out unnecessary outside contractors,” the spokesperson added.
But the increased workload comes at a time when OJP’s staffing level is already down by approximately several hundred employees, one source said, and it is still struggling to finalize some grants for fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30, 2025. They are also in the process of working to finalize fiscal 2026 awards before Sept. 30, while also rolling out some $3 billion in new grants required by last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Moreover, some fear that eliminating outside experts from the review process could further risk politicizing how grants are awarded at a time when the White House has already directly intervened in the grantmaking process across the federal government.
“Grantmaking for victims services should not be based on political goals, but on best practices and demonstrable impact for victims and services,” said Jean Bruggeman, the co-executive director at Freedom Network USA who has also served as a peer reviewer in the past.
“Eliminating expertise allows you to focus on the administration’s goals — not the goals of Congress. Not the goal of victims and survivors. Not the goals of the program, but rather, the goals of the current administration,” Bruggeman said.
The peer review process is considered apolitical. However, over the years, there have been a few controversies and efforts to undermine the selection process by injecting political considerations into how awards are made.
During President Trump’s first administration, the union representing OJP workers filed a complaint with the Justice Department inspector general, alleging that a Trump appointee was screening the social media profiles of peer reviewers to ensure their views aligned with the Trump administration’s positions on issues including immigration.
In another controversy around the same time, the Justice Department faced internal complaints after the former head of OJP declined to award grants to two organizations that received high marks from peer reviewers and instead gave them to two groups that received low scores — Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina.
In the case of Hookers for Jesus, it received a $530,190 grant over three years to support its safe house for trafficking victims. It was awarded the grant even though it had previously lost Nevada Victims of Crime Act funds after the state discovered the group was forcing victims to attend one specific church and requiring them to participate in religious activities as a condition of receiving housing.
In another controversy dating back to President George W. Bush’s tenure, the former director for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention granted awards to groups that received low peer review scores, including the World Golf Foundation’s “First Tee” program.
An inspector general investigation later faulted him for breaching ethics rules by accepting a free round of golf from the group before he recommended them for the grant award. He did not reimburse the group until two years later, when he was ordered to appear before Congress to answer questions about the grants.
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