Program Profile: Arkansas Community Corrections Texting Protocol

This program sends text-message reminders to clients under community supervision to help reduce missed probation and parole appointments. The program is rated Promising. Clients who received reminders 1 day before the appointment and those who received two texts before the appointment were statistically significantly less likely to cancel or not attend appointments. There was no statistically significant effect for clients receiving text reminders 2 days before the appointment.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals/Target Population

Data from the Arkansas Community Corrections agency showed that, as of 2018, individuals under community supervision missed their probation or parole appointments about 30 percent of the time (Hastings et al., 2021a). This limits the clients’ (i.e., individuals under community supervision) opportunity for prosocial contact with their probation/parole officers and could result in a violation. Therefore, to reduce the number of missed appointments, the Arkansas Community Corrections agency contracted with a software provider company to enhance the capacity of its Case Management System. The enhancement included revising the Case Management System to allow the Arkansas Community Corrections agency to send text message reminders directly to clients, using contact information gathered by the agency and by the courts. The goal of this text reminder protocol system is to reduce the rate of cancellations and no-shows at probation or parole appointments for clients under community supervision in Arkansas.

Program Components

Community supervision in Arkansas requires that minimum-level clients under supervision have one office visit every 3 months with their probation or parole officer. The enhanced Case Management System provides a central recording platform for all clients under community supervision across all 54 urban and rural offices in the state. Every appointment made for each client is recorded in advance in the Case Management System. The system holds the phone number of each client and automatically triggers text-based appointment reminders and processes incoming appointment confirmations, while maintaining a complete history of all text message communications within the database (Cision PR Newswire, 2020). The system also records the outcome of every appointment—held, canceled, or no-show—on the date of the appointment.

Study 1

Hastings and colleagues (2021a) conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess the effect of the Arkansas Community Corrections (ACC) texting protocol on the rates of canceled appointments and no-shows with probation or parole officers for clients under community supervision during a 6-month period.

In July 2018, all 23,209 clients in the ACC system who were on parole or probation and had an active cell phone, a supervision end date of Feb. 1, 2019, or later, and no outstanding warrants or other issues that would interfere with their completion of the study were identified for participation. Five-dimensional stratified sampling (gender, age, race, risk level, and supervision type) and random selection were used to assign clients to one of four treatment groups. Group 1: clients were sent a text reminder 2 days before the appointment (“early text”); Group 2: clients were sent a text reminder 1 day before the appointment (“late text”); Group 3: clients were sent text reminders both 1 day and 4 days before the appointment (“two texts”); and the control group in which clients were not sent text reminders. All clients in the four treatment conditions were tracked for attendance at scheduled supervision meetings from Oct. 1, 2018, through April 15, 2019.

Study 1 focused on the results for clients in Group 1, the early text treatment group (n = 857), compared with clients in the control group (n = 865).

There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in regard to age, sex, race, supervision, and risk classifications. At baseline, clients in the early text treatment group (Group 1) were on average 37.4 years old and 73.5 percent male. They were predominately white (66.1 percent), 31.1 percent Black, and 2.5 percent Asian. About 58 percent of the early text treatment group were on probation, and 41.5 percent were on parole. Clients in the control group were on average 37.5 years old and 73.1 percent male. This group was 66.2 percent white, 31.0 percent Black, and 1.9 percent Asian. About 58 percent of clients in the control group were on probation, and 41.8 percent were on parole.

Background, covariate, and outcome data were derived from the case management system that sent and tracked the reminder texts. One-way analysis of variance and chi-square analyses were used to examine differences in rates of canceled appointments and no-shows between clients in the early text treatment group and those in the control group during the 6-month period. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

Study 2

Hastings and colleagues (2021b) used the same sample and methods from Study 1 (Hastings et al., 2021a) to assess the effect of the ACC texting protocol on the rates of canceled appointments and no-shows with probation or parole officers for clients under community supervision during a 6-month period. Study 2 focused on the results for clients in Group 2, the late text treatment group (n = 868), compared with clients in the control group (n = 865).

There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in regard to age, sex, race, supervision, and risk classifications. The baseline demographics of the control group were the same as described in Study 1. Clients in the late text treatment group (Group 2) were on average 37.3 years old and 73.4 percent male. They were 65.9 percent white, 31.3 percent Black, and 2.4 percent Asian. Roughly 58 percent of clients in the late text treatment group were on probation, and 41.9 percent were on parole.

The analysis was performed the same as described in Study 1 above to examine differences in rates of canceled appointments and no-shows between clients in the late text treatment group and those in the control group during the 6-month period. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

Study 3

Hastings and colleagues (2021c) used the same sample and methods from Study 1 (Hastings et al., 2021a) to assess the effect of the ACC texting protocol on the rates of canceled appointments and no-shows with probation or parole officers for clients under community supervision during a 6-month period. Study 3 focused on the results for clients in Group 3, the two-texts treatment group (n = 880), compared with clients in the control group (n = 865).

There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in regard to age, sex, race, supervision, and risk classifications. The baseline demographics of the control group were the same as described in Study 1. The two-texts treatment group (Group 3) were on average 37.2 years old and 73.4 percent male. They were 65.9 percent white, 31.2 percent Black, and 2.6 percent Asian. Roughly 58 percent of clients in the two-texts treatment group were on probation, and 41.9 percent were on parole.

The analysis was performed the same as described in Study 1 to examine differences in rates of canceled appointments and no-shows between clients in the two-texts treatment group and those in the control group during the 6-month period. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

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

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

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 No Effects 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?