Court date reminders reduce court nonappearance: A meta-analysis

Research summary

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that examined whether providing people with a postcard, phone call, or text message reminder of their court date reduces their likelihood of failing to appear in court. We included 12 studies (N = 79,255) that compared court appearance rates between groups of people who received a reminder to groups who did not receive a reminder. Results showed that reminders significantly reduce the odds of failure to appear in court. Further, charge type moderated reminder effectiveness; court reminders had a slightly larger effect in studies that did not include people with felony charges. However, the difference in effect size as a function of charge type was small and reminders significantly reduced the odds of failure to appear in both studies that did and did not include people with felony charges. In contrast, there was no evidence that retaining people who could not be contacted in a reminder treatment group (versus excluding them from the study or intentionally assigning them to the nonreminded control group) moderated reminder effectiveness. Finally, a narrative synthesis of studies revealed that studies using more rigorous designs generally produced smaller effects compared to studies with less rigorous designs and that effects did not differ systematically as a function of reminder formats (e.g., postcard, phone call) or frequencies (e.g., one reminder or multiple).

Policy implications

Court date reminders effectively reduce failures to appear across studies, so they are an inexpensive tool for jurisdictions seeking to implement pretrial reform efforts. However, reminders offer only a modest reduction in failures to appear because they only address failures to appear that result from missing or forgetting information. Thus, reminders are not a panacea to court nonappearance. Jurisdictions should consider other programs and interventions as well. Courts could address low-barrier nonappearances with reminders and then efficiently focus more involved resources to help more people get to court.