The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces federal civil rights laws and other provisions that prohibit discrimination by recipients of federal financial assistance from OJP, the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), and other covered entities. These civil rights laws and other provisions prohibit recipients and other covered entities from discriminating in services and employment because of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, and sex. Recipients are also prohibited from discriminating in services because of age.
OCR efforts include:
- Ensuring that recipients of financial assistance from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) comply with applicable federal civil rights laws.
- Leading nationwide effort aimed at improving language access services that law enforcement agencies provide to the limited English proficient communities that they serve.
- Implementing a national civil rights enforcement strategy which strengthens the capacity of state agencies that administer the Department’s formula grants to monitor subrecipients’ compliance with federal civil rights laws.
- Working to ensure that juvenile justice agencies provide limited English proficient youth and their parents or guardians with appropriate language assistance during important pre-adjudication encounters with the juvenile justice system.
- Advancing the Department’s effort to implement the landmark nondiscrimination provision in the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 (VAWA) which ensures that LGBT victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have equal access to VAWA funded services
- Ensuring funded law enforcement agencies are complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 when working in schools.
- Promoting gender diversity in the ranks of funded state law enforcement agencies.
Resources
OCR Leadership
Kevonne Small
Director
Dr. Kevonne Small brings more than 20 years of civil rights enforcement and policy expertise developed through her work in both the public and private sectors as a senior advisor, senior counsel, project manager, researcher and professor.
Dr. Small has significant leadership experience developing and managing projects, advancing stalled initiatives, navigating complex issues with diverse groups of stakeholders to build consensus, facilitating working groups, organizing convenings and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data. As Director of the Office of Justice Programs' Office for Civil Rights, she leads a staff committed to enforcing federal civil rights laws and other provisions that prohibit discrimination by recipients of federal financial assistance from OJP, the Justice Department's Office on Violence Against Women and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, and other covered entities.
Dr. Small previously served as Acting Chief of Staff to the Assistant Attorney General for OJP and advised leadership and senior staff on ways to infuse civil rights protections into the grantmaking and compliance process. She also served as a senior counsel in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy and as a senior attorney advisor and trial attorney in the Department's Civil Rights Division.
Prior to her work with the Department, Dr. Small evaluated federally funded programs for program efficacy and managed criminal justice research projects at both the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center and ICF International's Child, Family, and Community Studies Group. She began her career teaching criminal justice courses at California State University, San Bernardino.
Dr. Small is a graduate of Villanova University School of Law and earned her Ph.D. in Justice, Law & Society from the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C.
OCR Contacts
OCR Email
Main Line: 202-307-0690
Fax: 202-354-4380
TDD/TTY: 202-307-2027