Program Profile: Live Court Date Reminder Phone Calls (New York City)

Program Goals/Target Population

There are various approaches to improving court appearance rates (Ferri 2022). A court date reminder program was implemented in New York City that involved making a live phone call to individuals who had been arrested and issued desk appearance tickets (that is, they were released before their first court appearance/arraignment) and for whom the New York City Police Department had obtained a phone number during the processing of the arrest. The goal of the program was to improve court appearance rates.

Services Provided

New York City allows police officers to issue a “desk appearance ticket” for individuals arrested for an alleged misdemeanor or certain crime of lesser severity who meet specific criminal history criteria. In these cases, the individual is brought to a police precinct and fingerprinted. The New York City Police Department investigates the individual’s criminal history, including prior convictions, active warrants, and existing orders of protection. If the individual qualifies, they can leave the precinct after the officer processes the necessary paperwork. With this type of arrest, the individual is given a physical ticket that includes the date and location where they must appear for their court appearance (i.e., arraignment), which may be anywhere from a few days to many weeks after the arrest. In this way, the individual is released into the community from the precinct and spends considerably less time detained, compared with individuals transported directly to the courthouse for arraignment (Ferri 2022).

The failure-to-appear rate at arraignment, which is measured by the issuance of an executed warrant, for those issued desk appearance tickets in New York City has been around 25 percent in recent years (New York City Criminal Justice Agency 2019), which is high compared with other types of arrest. The New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice contracts with one of the city’s pretrial service agencies (known as “the provider”) to remind released individuals of future court dates, and in fall 2017 they created a system for making live-call court-date reminders.

In this system, provider personnel made reminder phone calls to individuals with scheduled court appearances, either three days before the court date or on the same day, or both (three days before and on the day of). 

For the three-day reminder phone calls, providers would start each morning at 10:00 a.m. and make calls until approximately 8:00 p.m. If the caller spoke to the individual with a court date or someone who stated they could provide the message to them in a timely manner, no more attempts were made. If the caller reached the individual’s voicemail on the first attempt, they would leave a message and make one more call to attempt to speak to someone directly. If the caller reached voicemail on any attempt beyond the first call, they would leave a message and not make any further attempts. Up to four attempts were made for the three-day reminders. 

Provider personnel made the same-day reminder phone calls each morning from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m., because for most hearings the individual was required to be in court by 9:30 a.m. If the caller spoke to the individual with a court date or to someone who stated they could immediately provide the message to them, no more attempts were made. If the caller reached the individual’s voicemail, the caller would leave a message and not make any further attempts. A maximum of two attempts were made per individual for the same-day reminders. 

As mentioned in the Methodology, both three-day and same-day reminder calls were considered not received if the number was disconnected, if someone answered and indicated it was a wrong number, if someone answered and indicated that even though they knew the individual with a court date they would not be able to convey the message in time for the appearance, or if the provider did not make an attempt.

Ferri (2022) conducted a subgroup analysis by race to examine the effect of New York City’s live-court-date-reminder phone calls on appearance rates for individuals who had been arrested, issued desk appearance tickets, and randomized into any of the three treatment groups described in the Methodology section, compared with those in the control group who did not receive a call. Of Hispanic individuals in the control group, 21.6 percent failed to appear at their scheduled court dates, while 11.9 percent of Hispanic individuals in any of the treatment groups failed to appear, yielding a statistically significant 44.9 percent reduction in the failure-to-appear rate. Of Black individuals in the control group, 22.0 percent failed to appear, while 15.4 percent of Black individuals in all treatment groups failed to appear, which equates to a 30 percent reduction in failure-to-appear rates — a statistically significant difference. There were no statistically significant differences in failure-to-appear rates for white and Asian individuals in the treatment groups, compared with those in the control group.

The labor costs of the individuals who made the live court date reminder phone calls in New York City were approximately $4,227 during the study period, or approximately $17,000 over the course of a year (Ferri 2022).

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

New York City Criminal Justice Agency. 2019. Annual Report 2017. New York, NY: New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Pretrial Interventions for Ensuring Appearance in Court

During the pretrial process, defendants may be released on certain conditions. To ensure that released defendants show up to their court date, jurisdictions have used three strategies: 1) court-date reminder notifications, 2) bonds, and 3) supervision in the community. The goal of is to reduce the failure-to-appear rates of defendants. Across the three strategies, the practice is rated Promising for decreasing failure-to-appear rates but rated Ineffective for reducing arrest rates.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

	Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types
	Justice Systems or Processes - Failure-to-Appear

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?