Justice
Hello, Your Court Date Is Tomorrow
Texting people reminders makes them more likely to show up for court, according to a pilot program in New York City.
A new study shows that texting (or rather, a series of carefully designed text messages) could help reduce the number of open arrest warrants in New York City.
In 2014, 41 percent of the 320,000 New Yorkers who were issued tickets for low-level offenses missed their court dates. This oversight is called a Failure to Appear (FTA), and automatically results in the issuance of an arrest warrant; currently, New York City has hundreds of thousands of open warrants. And civilians may not realize that missing a court date means they can be taken into custody the next time they interact with a police officer.