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46 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 While text messages do not replace official court notifications in any of these countries, they've proven to be successful at providing involved parties with the most recent and vital court information so mandatory steps and actions can be taken in time without delay—avoiding the loss of legal rights or unnecessary incarceration and fines. In order for international electronic notifications to take action, consent is first required with a signed user's agreement in almost all above mentioned jurisdictions. For those courts, SMS or other electronic summonses will only be sent after written consent is given. If consent is then provided, the approved method of communication becomes binding throughout the entire court proceeding. In regard to the international courts mentioned in this article, pre-authorized consent is mandatory for nearly 70 percent of States using technology as a tool for notifications. In the United States SMS Reminders Reduce Warrants Earlier this month, a team of U.S. researchers conducted two field studies in New York City about court appearance behaviors. They published their findings in the article, "Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court," (Alissa Fishbane, Aurelie Ouss, Anuj K. Shah, 2020). The team made notable use of their findings, showing that by redesigning the summons form and providing text message reminders, failures to appear in court were reduced by 13-21 percent, which led to 30,000 fewer arrest warrants over a three-year period. In the U.S. failure to appear records are not kept on a national level. However, the Pretrial Justice Institute tracks and reports that 12 million Americans each year are booked for pretrial offenses, bench warrants, technical violations and failure to appear. On the issue of FTA (failure to appear), the consequences for the defendant can be severe, not to mention result in increased fines and jail time. FTA warrants can also lead to a loss of employment and wages, housing issues and go so far as impacting guardianship of their minor children and having bail revoked or forfeited—all because of a failure to appear for mandatory court dates. The ability to access notifications that can mitigate FTA instances can have lifelong impacts on an individual and their families. Technology Makes a Significant Impact Aside from the social and emotional impact this has on a significant portion of the population, jailing defendants pretrial for issues such as FTA on misdemeanor offenses is costly to taxpayers; some estimates put this cost at around $14 billion a year to taxpayers. By contrast, some public defenders in various court jurisdictions have made use of software that allows them to send text- message reminders to their clients. The average cost for this software runs around $20,000 to install and incurs $2 per defendant, per year after the initial installation. Perhaps more impactful is the immediate financial implication software like this can have. We can all relate to the chaos of changing dates and appointments, exhaling on that last-minute relief you've in fact caught the mistake beforehand. Public Perspective Can Hinder Positive Outcomes The aforementioned study makes an important point of the inaccurate public perspective of the cause of failures to appear in court by defendants. In this study, criminal justice professionals predominately saw failures to appear as relatively unintentional, as in from their knowledge, experience and insight they see that most of the time when defendants do not appear it's a mistake, and an unintentional one. However, laypeople (non-legal professionals) believe FTA is more intentional, as in they should have known, and did know, but did not want to appear. As public policy is driven by public opinion (right or wrong), these layperson beliefs actually are found to reduce support for judicial policies that make court information more accessible, clear and fluid, while in turn increases support for the punishment of FTA offenses. The findings of this study suggest that criminal justice policies would be made more effective and civilized by anticipating what each and every single one of us is guilty of from time to time, unintentional human error. The Cause for Failing to Appear in Court There is elaboration here, the study goes on to explore why defendants might miss court and what unintentional errors actually arise from. While it is assumed and usual for defendants to be given all the relevant information needed, (e.g. when, where and the consequences for missing court, etc.) they might be insufficiently aware of what the most important details are. This study F E A T U R E S

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