Journal article
Reducing Missed Appointments for Probation and Parole Supervision: a Randomized Experiment with Text Message Reminders
Cambridge journal of evidence-based policing, v 5(3-4)
Dec 2021
Abstract
Research Question
Can text message reminders reduce missed appointments with probation or parole officers by clients under community supervision?
Data
In collaboration with Arkansas Community Corrections (ACC), 4,000 clients under community supervision were selected and tracked for attendance at scheduled supervision meetings from October 1, 2018, through April 15, 2019, with a test sample of 3,470 clients scheduled to attend 14,135 appointments assigned at random to different conditions of appointment reminders.
Methods
Marquis Software, under contract to ACC, randomly assigned the test sample to one of four conditions of text messages generated by company software: control (no text messages before appointments),
early text
(
2 days
before the appointment),
late text
(
1 day
before the appointment), and
two texts
(both
1 day
and
4 days
before the appointment). Marquis then abstracted the records of appointment attendance by treatment group, for analysis by the academic co-authors.
Findings
During the 6-month experiment, the best attendance was found in the treatment group assigned to
late text
reminders 1 day before the appointment. That group had 29% fewer no-shows and 21% fewer cancelled appointments than the control group during the experiment. In a subsequent rollout of the
late text
treatment to all of the clients still under supervision, the entire remaining group had 30% fewer missed appointments compared to the control group during the experiment.
Conclusions
Text messages reminding clients to attend parole and probation officer meetings can reduce missed appointments, with potentially substantial reductions in imprisonment due to technical violations of community supervision conditions.
Metrics
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Details
- Title
- Reducing Missed Appointments for Probation and Parole Supervision: a Randomized Experiment with Text Message Reminders
- Creators
- Charise Hastings - Marquis Software Development, IncChris Thomas - University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignMichael Ostermann - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyJordan M. Hyatt - Drexel UniversitySteve Payne - Marquis Software Development, Inc
- Publication Details
- Cambridge journal of evidence-based policing, v 5(3-4)
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Criminology and Justice Studies
- Other Identifier
- 991020836473904721