By Frank W. Lewis

By Jennifer Doleac

By Anne Stotler

Courts deal with humans, and humans miss appointments. To account for this fact of life, courts should consider operating like every other industry — e.g., medical, voting, licensing, housing, mechanics, beauty, etc. — by offering two types of flexibility: flexible scheduling before the date, and extending grace periods after a missed appointment to allow people to appear before warrants are issued.

By Stephen Saloom

Failure to appear in criminal cases can lead defendants to jail time, draining resources from police, courts, and taxpayer dollars. But according to Alissa Fishbane, managing director at ideas42, a nonprofit think tank, the solution may be cheaper and easier than expected. A2J Lab Faculty Director Jim Greiner spoke with Fishbane in this episode of Proof Over President about her research into informational gaps that may be a root cause for several court issues like failure to appear and payment of traffic tickets.

Focusing on practical solutions for improving court attendance is key to reducing harm and using limited justice system resources better.

Riverdale has implemented a message reminder system to reduce the number of people whose lives are upended by missing a court date.

Our criminal legal system levies unduly harsh penalties for “failure to appear.”

• Every year, millions of Americans are required to appear in court for low-level offenses, but thousands fail to show up and are issued warrants for their arrest.

• It is often assumed that people who fail to appear in court do so purposefully, but new research challenges that belief.

• Studies suggest that simplifying citation forms and issuing reminders can keep thousands of citizens out of jail and save state and local governments significant amounts of money.

New national report can help local leaders get more people to show up.

Researchers Alissa Fishbane, Aurélie Ouss, and Anuj Shah worked with New York City government offices to develop a program to improve court appearance rates. The program, which involved both redesigned summons forms and texting defendants with reminders, prevented 30,000 arrest warrants for missed court appearances over a recent three-year period.

The researchers recommend that instead of increasing punitive measures, such as fines or jail time, for missed court appearances, policymakers should devise behavioral interventions to help defendants better comply with court summons.

Reducing unnecessary warrants and jail time. Alissa Fishbane, Managing Director at ideas42, and Dr. Aurélie Ouss, Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, joined the podcast to talk about their study to reduce the number of arrest warrants for failure to appear in court in the New York City criminal justice system. The guests highlighted the use of behavioral interventions, or nudges, that were low cost and easy to implement. They also shared how other local governments can apply behavioral science practices.

Behavioral interventions or "nudges" that improve communication of critical court information may be more effective at improving court attendance for low-level criminal offenses than increasing threats of further punishment, according to a new study published in the October 9 issue of Science.

Redesigned ticket—and text message reminders—led to a 13% drop in missed court dates.

Behavioral “nudges” can prevent people from facing an arrest warrant for a missed court date.

A three-year collaboration researched the underlying behaviors associated with missing a court summons—and how to use behavioral science interventions to change those behaviors.

By re-thinking the look of a standard summons alone, the failure-to-appear rate for people who received the redesigned paperwork dropped by 13%.  Many of the tickets also collected cell phone numbers from the defendants, allowing the city to try some text interventions. Together, the new summons and text reminders caused a 36% drop in those skipping court.

Texting people reminders makes them more likely to show up for court, according to a pilot program in New York City.