Behavioral Biases and Legal Compliance: A Field Experiment

Emanuel, Natalia; Ho, Helen

doi:10.31235/osf.io/ztnmf

Cited by 3 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Court personnel time is wasted when defendants miss court, and efforts are diverted in issuing warrants. Each warrant costs approximately $21 in judge and staff time (23), which translates into a savings of more than $600,000 in court personnel time alone from these interventions. We can also estimate that each arrest would cost $454 in police and court personnel time [based on (24); see supplementary materials for detailed calculations].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court

Fishbane

Ouss

Shah

2020

Science

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Each year, millions of Americans fail to appear in court for low-level offenses, and warrants are then issued for their arrest. In two field studies in New York City, we make critical information salient by redesigning the summons form and providing text message reminders. These interventions reduce failures to appear by 13-21% and lead to 30,000 fewer arrest warrants over a 3-year period. In lab experiments, we find that while criminal justice professionals see failures to appear as relatively unintentional, laypeople believe they are more intentional. These lay beliefs reduce support for policies that make court information salient and increase support for punishment. Our findings suggest that criminal justice policies can be made more effective and humane by anticipating human error in unintentional offenses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court

Fishbane

Ouss

Shah

2020

Science

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“…Studies were conducted between the years 1977 and 2019. Among the academic publications, the oldest data were collected in 2009 (Bornstein et al., 2013), and the most recent in 2018–2019 (Emanuel & Ho, 2021). Among the government reports, the oldest data were collected in 1977 (Ben‐Ami, 1978), and the most recent in 2016 (Williamson, 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The format of reminders provided to people varies (e.g., letter, text message) as does the content of the reminders. In several studies, reminders included information about an upcoming court date plus additional information about resources, consequences, or contact information for court personnel (e.g., Chivers & Barnes, 2018; Emanuel & Ho, 2021; Lowenkamp et al., 2018). All studies compared groups of people who received reminders to groups who did not on subsequent rates of failure to appear in court.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Court date reminders reduce court nonappearance: A meta‐analysis

Zottola

Crozier

Ariturk

et al. 2022

Criminology & Public Policy

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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.

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“…If someone fails to appear in court, the court may put out a warrant for their arrest, send a court notice, or charge them with contempt of court and a fine. Emanuel and Ho (2020) demonstrate that the causal effect of failing to appear varies across people, but may result in larger fines or fees. If someone is rearrested for a new charge while out pretrial, they face additional charges associated with the new arrest.…”

Section: Background On the Us Bail Systemmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The alternative is important to consider since there are non-monetary interventions that can positively impact the behavior of people in the criminal legal system. For instance, court reminders have meaningful effects on court appearance (Emanuel and Ho 2020;Fishbane, Ouss, and Shah 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Money Bail, No Problems? Trade-offs in a Pretrial Automatic Release Program

Albright¹

2022

Preprint

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Many jurisdictions across the United States are implementing bail reform programs to reduce the use of money bail. Bail reform opponents argue that money bail is critical for averting pretrial misconduct, while proponents counter that the effects are small and not worth the consequent costs of pretrial detention. I examine this detention-misconduct trade-off using a program in Kentucky that automatically released people arrested for low-level offenses – people who usually would have had financial conditions for release from jail. I find that the program reduced total annual time in pretrial detention by over 25 person-years with no detectable effect on pretrial rearrest. Meanwhile, the program increased the number of annual court non-appearances by about 364. This trade-off is desirable if 1 court non-appearance is less costly than 26 days in detention.

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Behavioral Biases and Legal Compliance: A Field Experiment

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court

Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court

Court date reminders reduce court nonappearance: A meta‐analysis

No Money Bail, No Problems? Trade-offs in a Pretrial Automatic Release Program

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