Synthesis
What we know about helping people show up for court
Court-date SMS reminders, redesigned summonses, and procedural support — what reduces failure-to-appear rates and the cascading harms that follow.
2 experiments synthesized · 2 positive, 0 mixed, 0 null, 0 negative
Failure to appear for a court date is one of the highest-stakes administrative failures in the justice system. A missed court date can produce a bench warrant, additional fines, an arrest, lost wages, and — for low-income defendants — a spiral that ends in jail for what began as a traffic ticket. The intervention surface is mostly mechanical: people forget, can't get there, or don't understand the summons.
Court-date reminder programs are one of the few interventions in criminal justice where the experimental evidence is both strong and converges on a modest, replicable effect. SMS reminders alone reduce failure-to-appear by 4–8 percentage points across multiple replications. Redesigning the summons — making the date and consequences visually salient — produces gains of similar magnitude.
The cost-benefit math is overwhelming. The cost of an SMS is negligible; the cost of a single jail night is hundreds of dollars; the human cost is larger still.
Takeaway
If your jurisdiction does not already send court-date SMS reminders, this is the single most cost-effective justice intervention in the registry.
The underlying experiments
Positive findings
2 experiments- Positive
Court Date SMS Reminders to Reduce Failure to Appear
City of New York / ideas42 · New York City, NY, United States · 2015
Effect: FTA reduced by 21%; equivalent to 30,000 fewer arrest warrants annually if scaled citywide
- Positive
Personalized SMS for Court Fine Repayment
UK Courts Service / Behavioural Insights Team · United Kingdom · 2012
Effect: Personalized SMS with debtor's name: £12.87 average payment vs. £4.46 control (189% increase)
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