Court Date Notifications: A Summary of the Research and Best Practices for Building Effective Reminder Systems (2021)

While studies indicate court date reminder notification programs increase court appearance rates, additional peer-reviewed research is required before making confident inferences regarding the most effective type and timing of the notification. One study directly evaluating the impact of different notification methods (robocalls vs. live calls) found no differences between notification methods on court appearance rates (Ropac, unpublished). Additional peer-reviewed research is needed to identify how court date notifications impact court appearance rates by jurisdiction population size and region. One study (Bornstein et al., 2013) found individuals in rural counties were significantly more likely to appear for their scheduled court dates than those in urban counties (93.2% vs. 87.6%, respectively). However, given the vast differences in population size, politics, funding, available resources and technology, in addition to regional differences, it would behoove researchers in the field to investigate how such differences may influence court appearance rates as well as the implementation of notification strategies to increase court appearance rates.