Probation makes strides in slashing warrants
Texting helps drive ‘failure to appear’ charges lower
The Massachusetts Probation Service reported that it has “made great strides” in helping cut the number of warrants issued for “failure to appear” cases.
In the annual report on the
Massachusetts court system, the probation service highlighted the Interactive Text Response program, which alerts court users of upcoming court dates.
More than 218,600 text alerts were sent in fiscal year 2022, a whopping 264% increase from the previous fiscal year.
“During the year, MPS made great strides in adding court events and capturing phone numbers to opt into the program,” the annual report reads. “Between April and June 2022, over 78,000 successful notifications were sent to litigants across the state — 18,000 more than the previous quarter.
“The failure to appear rate for pretrial hearings was consistently lower for the text reminder group regardless of age, race, ethnicity, gender, or offense severity,” the court system reported in its yearend report.
The annual report summarized how the court system was able to restore some normalcy amid the COVID pandemic and made headway using technology.
“Though the pandemic continued to impact court operations in FY 2022, particularly through the first half of the year, we are pleased that the courts successfully adopted new practices that have improved and expedited court processes,” Kimberly Budd, chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, and other court leaders wrote in the report.
New case filings in Trial Court totaled 684,483 — a 13% increase from the first full fiscal year of the pandemic.