We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that examined whether providing people with a postcard, phone call, or text message reminder of their court date reduces their likelihood of failing to appear in court. We included 12 studies (N = 79,255) that compared court appearance rates between groups of people who received a reminder to groups who did not receive a reminder. Results showed that reminders significantly reduce the odds of failure to appear in court. Further, charge type moderated reminder effectiveness; court reminders had a slightly larger effect in studies that did not include people with felony charges. However, the difference in effect size as a function of charge type was small and reminders significantly reduced the odds of failure to appear in both studies that did and did not include people with felony charges. In contrast, there was no evidence that retaining people who could not be contacted in a reminder treatment group (versus excluding them from the study or intentionally assigning them to the nonreminded control group) moderated reminder effectiveness. Finally, a narrative synthesis of studies revealed that studies using more rigorous designs generally produced smaller effects compared to studies with less rigorous designs and that effects did not differ systematically as a function of reminder formats (e.g., postcard, phone call) or frequencies (e.g., one reminder or multiple).

中文翻译：

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开庭日期提醒减少出庭：荟萃分析

我们对研究进行了系统的回顾和荟萃分析，这些研究检查了向人们提供明信片、电话或短信提醒他们的出庭日期是否会降低他们未能出庭的可能性。我们纳入了 12 项研究（N = 79,255) 比较了收到提醒的人群与未收到提醒的人群之间的出庭率。结果表明，提醒显着降低了未能出庭的几率。进一步，收费式缓和提醒的有效性；在不包括被重罪指控的人的研究中，法庭提醒的影响略大。然而，作为指控类型函数的效应大小的差异很小，并且提醒显着降低了在包括和不包括重罪指控的人的两项研究中未出现的几率。相比之下，没有证据表明将无法联系到的人留在提醒治疗组（相对于将他们排除在研究之外或有意将他们分配到未提醒的对照组）会降低提醒的有效性。