Reducing courts' failure-to-appear rate by written reminders.

For the law to be effective, people must obey it (Caldeira, 1986; Tyler, 2006b). Although the law frequently involves el-ements of coercion, in practical terms the legal system has, at best, a limited ability to compel people to obey the law (e.g., Rottman, 2007; Tyler, 2006b). Voluntary acceptance minimizes the need for authorities to explain and justify each decision, re-duces the need to monitor implementation, and limits the ex-penditure of scarce resources to ensure compliance (e.g., Rob-inson Darley, 1997; Tyler, 2006a). One area of the criminal justice system where compliance is particularly lacking is in individuals ’ response to orders to appear in court for relatively minor offenses such as traffic of-fenses, misdemeanors, and low-level felonies. Noncustodial criminal defendants often fail to appear for court. This occurs for all kinds of mandated appearances: arraignment, pretrial