This article examines the impacts of court-date reminder phone calls on the likelihood of individuals successfully making their required court appearance; it lays out the research methodology, outcomes, and discussion, noting that the study was limited by small disparities in intended and attempted treatment, but that reminder phone calls were shown to reduce failure to appear before curt by 37 percent.
The aims of the study reported here were to test the effectiveness of court date reminders on failure to appear (FTA) and to test their effectiveness based on demographics and case characteristics. The authors performed a randomized controlled trial with four treatment groups: no call; reminder call made three days in advance of the appearance; reminder call made the same day of the appearance; and reminder call made both three days in advance as well as the same day. Participants included individuals released before their first appearance (arraignment) for which the provider had a phone number at which to make a reminder attempt. Some demographic information is available (race, sex, and age) and some case characteristics are available (the time from arrest to arraignment, and charges). By using an intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis, reminders were shown to reduce the FTA rate by 37 percent; the results suggest the timing of the reminders was not important. People of color benefited from the reminders more than white participants; and participants with a longer time between the arrest and the arraignment benefited more than participants with a shorter time between the arrest and arraignment. The authors conclude that court-date reminders may reduce racial disparities in FTA rates. Future research should attempt to include measures of perceptions of procedural justice and other measures of socioeconomic status. The current study was limited by small disparities in intended and attempted treatment, and lack of data on perceptions of procedural justice, and socioeconomic status. Publisher Abstract Provided