On April 22, the Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP), which manages the Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) initiative, received notice that CEPP’s funding from the U.S. Department of Justice had been terminated. This action was part of a broader, sweeping rollback affecting over 350 organizations working to advance justice, equity, and public safety nationwide.
The termination of these funds does not impact APPR, which is generously supported by Arnold Ventures. However, this drastic action does impact CEPP’s capacity to serve the pretrial field. CEPP’s federal funding supported the Community Supervision Resource Center, and while the website remains available, all work on that project ceased immediately.
We are especially disheartened that CEPP had to end work on its next iteration of the Rural Pretrial Practitioner Fellowship. As part of the APPR project, CEPP successfully piloted the Fellowship, and it was featured at a plenary session at last year’s NAPSA conference in New Orleans. In October 2024, the program was selected as a recipient of a FY24 Bureau of Justice Assistance Encouraging Innovation grant. To our dismay, the federal grant for the Rural Pretrial Practitioner Fellowship (RPPF) was also terminated last week.
The RPPF was created to strengthen rural pretrial systems by providing rural practitioners with mentorship, training, and leadership development. This sudden cut not only halts those efforts—it undermines a program recognized for its promise and potential to drive innovation in justice reform to communities that don’t often receive the sustained attention of their more urban counterparts.
The loss of the RPPF is significant—rural communities already face critical resource gaps in implementing effective pretrial practices, including limited funding and staff, scarce community-based services, and minimal access to pretrial-specific training and professional development. The Fellowship was designed to address these persistent challenges and build local leadership capacity.
While the termination of this program is a setback, CEPP and APPR remain committed to rural communities. We are actively exploring new ways to support rural practitioners and advance pretrial justice nationwide.
We want to be clear: CEPP and APPR are not going away. Our mission to uplift rural justice systems is more critical than ever.