Justice Department to Award $300 Million to Model Cities Restoring Law and Order

The U.S. Department of Justice will award $300 million to selected model cities that implement policies explicitly focused on restoring law and order, according to a department press release issued June 3, 2026.

The grants will go to an undisclosed number of cities that submit qualifying plans. Per the release, eligible programs must prioritize enforcement of existing statutes, prosecution of repeat offenders, and deployment of additional police resources. The department did not specify the exact number of cities that will receive funding or the per-city allocation.

The initiative changes the prior practice in which many federal law-enforcement grants emphasized social services, community outreach, or violence-prevention programs without measurable enforcement benchmarks. Under the new model-cities criteria, recipient jurisdictions must document year-over-year declines in violent crime, homicide, and gun-related offenses.

Awards will be announced in the coming weeks and funds will be disbursed beginning in fiscal year 2027, which starts October 1, 2026.

Downstream, cities that accept the grants will face binding reporting deadlines to the Bureau of Justice Assistance every six months. Noncompliance or failure to meet crime-reduction targets can trigger clawback of funds. The grants also require participating police departments to coordinate with federal task forces on fentanyl trafficking and organized retail theft, automatically activating joint operations that draw in DEA and FBI personnel already stationed in those metro areas.

State legislatures that oversee municipal budgets will need to appropriate matching local funds or risk losing eligibility in subsequent funding rounds.

This is the first major discretionary grant program launched by the Justice Department since the current administration took office. The $300 million allocation represents a reallocation from prior-year community-policing and violence-intervention accounts that had been distributed under different criteria finalized in 2022 and 2023.

Primary sources: U.S. Department of Justice