SJC Exchange Library

In 2014, nearly 41% of the approximately 320,000 cases from tickets issued to people for low-level offenses in New York City (NYC) had recipients who did not appear in court or resolve their summons by mail. This represents approximately 130,000 missed court dates for these offenses. Regardless of the offense severity (summonses are issued for offenses ranging from things like littering on the street or sidewalk to drinking in public), failure to appear in court automatically results in the issuance of an arrest warrant. Because warrants are costly and burdensome for both the criminal justice system and recipients, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice—in partnership with the New York City Police Department and New York State Unified Court System Office of Court Administration—asked ideas42 nd the University of Chicago Crime Lab to design and implement inexpensive, scalable solutions to reduce the failure to appear (FTA) rate.

From March 2016 to September 2017 they implemented and evaluated their interventions, and showed that both have significant and positive effects on appearance rates. They found that behavioral redesign of the form reduced FTA by 13%. This form has already been scaled system-wide to all criminal court summonses, and, based on 2014 figures, translates to preventing roughly 17,000 arrest warrants per year.