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

This program provides calls to individuals who have been arrested and released while they wait to appear for arraignment, to remind them to appear on their scheduled court dates. The program is rated Promising. There were statistically significant reductions in failure-to-appear rates for individuals in all three treatment groups who received phone call reminders, compared with individuals in the control group who did not receive any reminder.

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

There are various approaches to improving court appearance rates that do not carry the collateral consequences of pretrial detention (Ferri 2022a). Court date reminder programs are an approach that can be implemented in different ways, including through written reminders such as postcards or text messages. A court date reminder program was implemented in New York City and, rather than using written reminders, 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 a valid phone number was available. 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 conducts an investigation of 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 those individuals transported directly to the courthouse for arraignment (Ferri 2022a).

However, 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 3 days before the court date or on the same day, or both (3 days before and on the day of). For the 3-day reminder phone calls, providers would start each morning at 10:00 a.m. and make calls throughout the day 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 3-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. A reminder call was 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.

Study 1

Ferri (2022a) conducted a randomized controlled trial to test the effect of New York City’s live court date reminder phone calls on appearance rates for individuals who had been arrested and issued desk appearance tickets. A total of 2,219 individuals with their first scheduled court date during the study period were randomized to one of three treatment groups: 1) individuals to receive a call 3 days before their scheduled court date (the 3-day call treatment group, n = 640); 2) individuals to receive a call on the same day as their scheduled court date (the same-day call treatment group, n = 419); and 3) individuals to receive calls 3 days before and on the same day as their scheduled court date (the both 3-day and same-day calls treatment group, n = 679). The remaining individuals (n = 481) received no calls. The study by Ferri (2022a) was examined separately for each treatment group. The CrimeSolutions review of Study 1 focused on outcomes for the 3-day call treatment group (n = 640), compared with the control group (n = 481).

The provider began a pilot of the reminder program on October 18, 2017, and spent the first several weeks addressing difficulties associated with training, implementation, data collection, and the software applications. The analysis began after the pilot and included cases of individuals scheduled for their arraignment on or after November 6, 2017, through January 26, 2018—the last day on which the pretrial service provider was the sole provider of reminder calls. Individuals were excluded if they had an ongoing case with an appearance between November 6, 2017, and January 26, 2018, and that appearance occurred before the desk appearance arraignment.

There were no statistically significant differences between individuals in the three treatment groups and individuals in the control group with regard to race, sex, or age. Individuals across all three treatment groups were Black (n = 635), Hispanic (n = 571), white (n = 361), Asian (n = 143), and other races (n = 28), and individuals in the control group were Black (n = 205), Hispanic (n = 148), white (n = 72), Asian (n = 46), and other races (n = 10). Information on age and sex for individuals across all three treatment groups and the control group was not provided. Each day, the provider’s information technology department compiled a list of cases in which the individual had a scheduled court date 3 days in the future, and for whom the police department had obtained a phone number during the processing of the individual’s arrest. Using a pseudo-random number generator, each case was assigned an integer and then ranked in numerical order. Initially, the first 40 percent of cases were flagged to receive a reminder phone call 3 days before the scheduled court date, and later it was increased to 60 percent of cases. The 3-day reminder phone calls were conducted as described in the Program Description section.

Only executed warrants were analyzed to measure the outcome of interest, the failure-to-appear rate. An intent-to-treat analysis was used to examine differences in appearance rates between the 3-day call group and the control group. A logistic regression model in which the only predictor variable was the intended treatment was also run to provide the odds ratio for each treatment group relative to the control group. A subgroup analysis was conducted by race with all individuals in the three treatment groups combined compared with those in the control group.

Study 2

The CrimeSolutions review of Study 2 (Ferri 2022b) focused on outcomes for individuals randomized to the same-day call treatment group (n = 419) compared with individuals in the control group that did not receive any reminder call (n = 481).

The methodology was the same as described in Study 1 (Ferri 2022a), except that each day the provider’s information technology department compiled a list of cases in which the individual had a scheduled court date on that same day. As mentioned above, there were no statistically significant differences among individuals in the three treatment groups and individuals in the control group with regard to race, sex, or age of the individuals. The same number generator and assignment policy was used. Initially, the first 40 percent of cases were flagged to receive a reminder call on the morning of their scheduled court date, which was increased to 50 percent of individuals who received a reminder attempt the morning of their appearance. The same-day reminder phone calls were conducted as described in the Program Description section. The analytical method for Study 2 was the same as described in Study 1 above. A subgroup analysis was conducted by race with all individuals in the three treatment groups combined compared with those in the control group.

Study 3

The CrimeSolutions review of Study 3 (Ferri 2022c) focused on outcomes for individuals randomized to the 3-day and same-day calls treatment group (n = 679), compared with individuals in the control group who did not receive any reminder call (n = 481). The methodology and analytical methods were the same as described in Studies 1 and 2 above (Ferri 2022a; Ferri 2022b). As mentioned above, there were no statistically significant differences among the three treatment groups and the control group with regard to race, sex, or age of the individuals. A subgroup analysis was conducted by race with all individuals in the three treatment groups combined compared with those in the control group.

Ferri (2022a) 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—for 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. This is a 30 percent reduction in failure-to-appear rates—a statistically significant difference. However, 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.

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?