There may be an easy solution to reducing incarceration for missed court dates.
Alex Chohlas-Wood, assistant professor of computational social science at New York University, looks to his phone for answers.
Alex Chohlas-Wood is an Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science. His research investigates how computational approaches can improve public policy. In recent work, he designed an algorithm that uses generative AI to help prosecutors make race-blind charging decisions, tested whether automated text message reminders reduce incarceration for public defender clients, and developed a utility-maximizing framework to guide equitable algorithmic decision making. He is particularly interested in prototyping and evaluating scientific and technical innovations in applied collaborations with government agencies.
Automated Reminders Reduce Incarceration for Missed Court Dates
Have you ever forgotten an important date—like a birthday for a loved one? Imagine if forgetting meant ending up in jail.
Courts across America require people to appear in person as their cases proceed. If people fail to appear, judges can issue a warrant for their arrest. The next time these people encounter a police officer, they can be arrested and held in jail to ensure they don’t miss their next court date.
These arrests come at a high cost. Imagine trying to keep a job—or trying to arrange childcare—while you’re held in custody. It’s also harder to argue for your innocence while you’re in jail.
My co-authors and I wanted to know if simple text message reminders about an upcoming court date could reduce incarceration for missed court dates. We worked with the public defender’s office in San Jose, California to conduct a randomized study with over 5,700 low-income clients. We found that simple text message reminders reduced incarceration for missed court dates by over 20%.
A broad swath of clients appeared to benefit from these reminders—even people facing low-level charges. Think of a minor misdemeanor: you make a bad mistake one night, then forget a court date, and suddenly you’re in jail for a few days. A quick brush with the law just became much more serious.
Reminders help everyone by saving precious public resources instead of paying for wasteful jail stays. The reminders themselves cost about 60¢ per case—less than the costs of paying for someone’s arrest and incarceration.
Interventions like these are one way to make the justice system a little more humane. Stacking them with other common-sense reforms could substantially improve our justice system.
Read More:
[Science Advances] – Automated reminders reduce incarceration for missed court dates: Evidence from a text message experiment
[The Mercury News] – Study: Text reminders to South Bay public defender clients reduced jail time from court no-shows
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