Millions of Americans must attend mandatory court dates every year. To boost appearance rates, jurisdictions nationwide are increasingly turning to automated reminders, but previous research offers mixed evidence on their effectiveness. In partnership with the Santa Clara County Public Defender Office, we randomly assigned 5,706 public defender clients to either receive automated text message reminders (treatment) or not receive reminders (control). We found the reminders reduced warrants issued for missed court dates by approximately 20%, with 12.1% of clients in the control condition issued a warrant compared to 9.7% of clients in the treatment condition. We further found that incarceration from missed court dates dropped by a similar amount, from 6.2% in the control condition to 4.8% in the treatment condition. Our results illustrate the promise of automated reminders to reduce the negative consequences of missing court.

翻译：每年有数百万美国人必须参加强制性的法庭听证。为提高出庭率，全美各地司法管辖区越来越多地采用自动提醒措施，但以往研究对其有效性提供了不一致的证据。我们与圣克拉拉县公设辩护人办公室合作，将5,706名公设辩护人客户随机分为两组：一组接收自动短信提醒（处理组），另一组不接收提醒（对照组）。研究发现，提醒措施使因未出庭而被签发的逮捕令数量减少了约20%，对照组中有12.1%的客户被签发逮捕令，而处理组这一比例为9.7%。进一步分析表明，因未出庭导致的监禁率也出现类似下降，从对照组的6.2%降至处理组的4.8%。我们的研究结果揭示了自动提醒在减少未出庭负面后果方面的潜力。