Automated reminders reduce incarceration for missed court dates: Evidence from a text message experiment

Millions of Americans must attend mandatory court dates every year. To boost appearance rates, jurisdictions nationwide are increasingly turning to automated reminders. However, previous research paints an incomplete picture of their effectiveness—in particular, there has been little work assessing the impact of reminders on downstream arrests and incarceration. In partnership with the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, we randomly assigned 5709 public defender clients to either receive automated text message reminders (treatment) or not receive reminders (control). We found that reminders reduced warrants issued for missed court dates by ~20%, with 12.1% of clients in control issued a warrant compared to 9.7% of clients in treatment. Further, we found that incarceration from missed court dates dropped by a similar amount, from 6.6% in control to 5.2% in treatment. The effectiveness of reminders bolsters the theory that lapses in memory or comprehension contribute to missed court appearances.