Court Notifications Policy Brief

Court Date Reminders: What Works?

The New York Criminal Justice Agency (CJA), a nonprofit organization working under a contract with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, is the primary pretrial services provider for the city of New York. CJA staff work 24/7 in the City’s five main courthouses and two community courts and provide a variety of pretrial services and programming aimed at reducing unnecessary pretrial detention. One of CJA’s key programs which support this goal is its court reminder program for people awaiting a future court date. New York City has a robust court appearance rate for people released pretrial, which is remarkable given that judges release close to 80 percent of people at arraignment without monetary conditions. Currently, 86 percent of people released pretrial in New York City return to court for all their appearances. These rates are very high compared to national averages.

CJA works to remind all people released pretrial of their scheduled court appearances, with the expectation that this will promote their reappearance at court and reduce failure-to-appear (FTA) rates. CJA’s court notification system is an integral component in maintaining the city’s high rate of court reappearance.

Procedures The information needed to send court reminders, which comprise of calls, texts, and mailed letters, is collected mainly through CJA’s pretrial interview. Pretrial interviews are conducted by CJA’s Pretrial Associates. CJA also receives contact information from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for people who have received a Desk Appearance Ticket (DAT).

People in New York City who are released pretrial receive various court reminders from CJA, informing them of their court date, court address and arraignment location, and arrival time. The majority of people with DATs, summary arrests, Supreme Court arraignment dates, and fine payment dates receive some combination of the following reminders from CJA: (1) notification letters, sent one week prior to court date; (2) automated notification calls, made two days or three days prior to, as well as the day of the court date; (3) live notification calls, made one week prior to the court date; and (4) automated text messages, sent two days prior to the court date.

Court notifications are made through CJA’s Outreach Center and an external vendor, DiRad, which costs the agency approximately $50,000 annually. Phone notification is attempted for people who provided a phone number at arrest or during their pretrial interview. A reminder call is made starting either two or three days before a scheduled court date, and a wake-up call, or same-day call, is made between 6 AM and 10 AM on the morning of the scheduled appearance.

Reminder letters to people with upcoming court appearances are sent to all DAT arrests and to those who provided a mailing address but not phone number. Finally, CJA also sends text Contact: Angela Tolosa, Director of Operations | atolosa@nycja.org | 646-213-2508 The mission of the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc., is to assist the courts and the City in reducing unnecessary pretrial detention.

2 message notifications to people who provide a cellphone number. CJA plans to start providing email notifications in 2020.

CJA provides close to one million reminders per year. This includes: ▪ ▪ ▪

600,000 automated and a smaller number of live calls (close to 40,000 a year); 140,000 mailed letters, and 250,000 text message notifications sent to people with the ability to receive them.

Each notification attempt also includes the contact information for the CJA’s Helpline, which is run by five trained Outreach Associates, who answer live calls and respond to voicemails from people who have questions about court date and location, bail payment information, hours of operation, warrants, and more. Through the Helpline alone, Outreach Associates field between 300 and 400 calls per week.

Court Appearance Support Program CJA’s Court Appearance Support Program, also run through the Outreach Center, works to assist people in returning to court voluntarily if they have missed their scheduled court date. Using court calendars, Outreach Associates identify and make daily calls to people who have missed their required court appearances. They are encouraged to reschedule their appearance and are given detailed information on how to clear any warrants that may have been issued as a result.

Additional attempts to reach people by mail, automated calls, and text messages will occur for up to 29 days after a warrant is issued, or until someone voluntarily returns to court. The goal is to encourage defendants to come back to court voluntarily to resolve warrants issue issued for nonappearance.

Reminders for Desk Appearance Tickets Procedures for reminding people with Desk Appearance Tickets (DATs) of future court appearances are different from other types of reminders. First, people issued DATs are awaiting arraignment and so notifications concern the arraignment date. In contrast, those given summary or custodial arrests are booked and arraigned when they are arrested. Therefore, the notifications they receive if they are released pretrial concern the next post-arraignment court date, not arraignment itself. Secondly, people with DATs are notified by letter and by phone (if the information is available), even if a phone number is provided, in order to increase the likelihood that the reminder is received. People with DATs receive a DAT arraignment letter seven business days prior to their arraignment date, as well as phone notifications. Both groups receive phone notifications three days before as well as the same day as their court date. Finally, with both types of arrests, people are called two days in advance instead of three if their court date was rescheduled ahead of time.

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Results The impact of court notifications on failure-to-appear rates is especially relevant given the city’s recent push to reduce pretrial detention and summary arrests, which have resulted in a higher issuance of DATs. From 2000-2002 DATs made up approximately five percent of custodial arrests annually; since 2013 that number has jumped to approximately 25 percent. New bail legislation passed in April 2019 may increase this trend, because it requires the issuance of DATs for many low-level offenses.

Reminder systems will prove to be more important when DATs substantially increase in New York City – because people with DATs are at greater risk of not showing up for arraignment.

While 14 percent of people who face summary arrests miss a court appearance, 25 percent of those issued DATs fail to appear at their arraignment. CJA has shown that notifications can make a difference in reducing this gap. In a recent study by CJA, FTA at the first court appearance was reduced by as much as 47 percent for people who received both a three-day and same-day call, compared to those who did not receive any phone call reminder.

Beyond DATs, reminder calls are linked to improvement in court appearance rates for summary arrests as well. A study conducted by CJA at the end of 2019 links notifications to reduction of FTA rates for summary arrests: people who received notification calls were less likely to fail to appear at one or more scheduled court appearance.

For decades CJA has worked to combine innovation, research, and operations to improve our work. The lessons learned from CJA’s court reminder program are clear: reminders are a preventative pretrial innovation benefiting all stakeholders, by protecting vulnerable people from unnecessary justice involvement and saving the city resources. It is therefore essential that various criminal justice and pretrial agencies work together to collect accurate information and implement notification systems that support people in returning to court.

Contact: Angela Tolosa, Director of Operations | atolosa@nycja.org | 646-213-2508 The mission of the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc., is to assist the courts and the City in reducing unnecessary pretrial detention.