Findings, recommendations, and methodology are presented for the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Inspector General's audit of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP's) grant award to Communities in School, Inc. (CIS) of Arlington, VA, under the Multi-State Mentoring Initiative, which builds the capacity of community programs to provide mentoring services to high-risk, under-served students.
The audit's objective was to determine whether costs claimed under the grant were allowable, supported, and in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, guidelines, and terms and conditions. It assessed performance in financial management, Federal financial reports (FFRs), budget management and control, drawdowns, expenditures, and program performance. Overall, the audit found that CIS transactions were properly authorized and charged to the grant; however, CIS did not adequately monitor its sub-recipients' expenditures to ensure that the costs claimed were allowable, supported, or in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, guidelines, and terms and conditions of the grant. In addition, although CIS' performance was consistent with the overall goals and objectives of the grant, it did not maintain adequate records to support program accomplishments reported to OJJDP. Also, CIS must strengthen its procedures for ensuring that sub-recipients conduct required background checks on all mentors participating in the program. Six recommendations address just over $1.9 million in dollar-related findings, improvements in sub-recipient financial monitoring, improvement in record-keeping for performance-related data, and strengthening procedures for verifying background checks for mentors. 2 tables and appended objectives, scope, and methodology; schedule of dollar-related findings; summary of unsupported sub-recipient costs; stakeholder responses to the draft audit report; and analysis and summary of actions necessary to close the report