Sorry, Wrong Number: Tracking Court Attendance Targeting Through Testing a “Nudge” Text

Abstract

Research Question Will sending defendants text messages reminding them that they are due at court, the day before, cause more defendants to attend the first scheduled Magistrate's Court hearing? Data The study universe included all 946 defendants in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight sent a postal requisition requiring them to attend court, who also had a mobile phone number, between January and June 2017. Two outcomes were then tracked: court attendance and fail-to-appear warrants. Method The experiment randomly assigned defendants at the point of postal requisition creation into the control group (n = 472), which received the standard postal approach, or the experimental treatment group (n = 474), which was sent a prescribed text message on the day before the court appearance. An intention to treat methodology was adopted, with a treatment integrity rate of 97% achieved. Post-experimental phone calls tracked the accuracy of 300 of the text numbers used across both experimental and control groups. Findings No statistically significant effect of text messages was found on either attendance at court (OR 1.06, p = 0.661) or fail-to-appear warrants issued (OR 1.106, p = 0.512). Sub-group moderator analyses were conducted by age, distance from home to court, prior history of failure to appear, and investigator contact with defendants. No sub-group showed statistically significant differences in either outcome. The postexperimental survey of phone number quality in a random sample of 300 numbers from both groups found 62% were either invalid (uncontactable) or confirmed as not being valid for the defendant. Reanalysis limited to the sub-sample of the 112 accurate numbers found that text messages had produced a promising but non-significant boost in court attendance rates. Camb J Evid Based Polic (2018)

Court date reminders reduce court nonappearance: A meta‐analysis

“…However, in studies that found weaker effects (e.g., Bornstein et al, 2013 andLowenkamp et al, 2018), 34 or 67 people must be given reminders to prevent one person from failing to appear. Notably, the relative risk F I G U R E 2 Forrest plot for odds of failure to appear reduction, absolute risk reduction, and number needed to treat reported for the study by Chivers and Barnes (2018) are all negative because this study found that the group of people who were sent reminders had more failures to appear. We also calculated the summated relative and absolute risk reductions and the summated number needed to treat using the total rate of failures to appear across all 12 treatment groups (17.4%) and all control/comparison groups (25.1%).…”

“…All studies compared groups of people who received reminders to groups who did not on subsequent rates of failure to appear in court. Some studies found that reminders did reduce failures to appear (Bornstein et al, 2013;Fishbane et al, 2020;Howat et al, 2016) and other studies found that they did not (Chivers & Barnes, 2018;Lowenkamp et al, 2018). Despite the mixed findings of individual studies, two recent qualitative reviews-one of 13 court reminder programs (Thomas & Ahmed, 2021) and the other of pretrial support programs including but not limited to court reminders (Hatton & Smith, 2020)-generally conclude that reminders are effective.…”

“…Six studies included people with felony charges while five studies included only people with misdemeanor and/or traffic charges. The study by Chivers and Barnes (2018) was excluded from this moderator analysis because it was conducted in the United Kingdom and charge classifications may not be comparable. Results showed that the inclusion of people with felony charges was a significant moderator.…”

Testimony at court: a randomised controlled trial investigating the art and science of persuading witnesses and victims to attend trial

“…The redesigned form reduced failure to attend by 13%, which translated to preventing around 17,000 warrants being issued in the New York City area. The results of this study are at odds with those of Chivers and Barnes (2018). In this trial, a treatment group of 474 defendants in the Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (UK) were sent a text message the day before their court appearance, whilst the control group (n = 472) received the standard postal notification.…”

Reducing Missed Appointments for Probation and Parole Supervision: a Randomized Experiment with Text Message Reminders

“…One widely discussed innovation from the "nudge" literature (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) includes sending text messages to remind individuals to attend court appearances and other important scheduled events. One randomized trial of this approach by a police agency with arrested persons scheduled for court (Chivers & Barnes, 2018) in England found no effect on attendance-due to police failing to secure correct phone numbers at point of arrest. Another randomized trial in England with victims and witnesses tested text reminders 2-3 days prior to court dates, with no discernible effect on attendance rates (Cumberbatch & Barnes, 2018).…”