TY - JOUR
T1 - What Predicts Failure to Appear for Court Hearings?
AU - Spohn, Cassia
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Arnold Ventures.
Funding Information:
I thank officials in the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts and the Pima County Superior Court for proving access to the data for this project. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Arnold Ventures.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2023/8
Y1 - 2023/8
N2 - Despite its importance, the pretrial process has not been subjected to the type of scrutiny directed at judges’ sentencing decisions. The goal of this project, which uses data on defendants released pretrial in four Arizona counties, was to identify the factors that predict failure to appear (FTA) for court hearings and to determine whether these predictors vary across defendants. We found that the likelihood of FTA was affected by a combination of defendant characteristics, case characteristics, and the jurisdiction where the case was adjudicated; the FTA prediction score, which is obtained from the risk assessment instrument used in all Arizona counties, also had a significant effect on the likelihood of FTA. Discussion focuses on inter-jurisdictional differences in FTA rates, the fact that the type of pretrial release did not predict FTA, and the fact that the defendant’s race/ethnicity affected the FTA prediction score and most of the Public Safety Assessment factors.
AB - Despite its importance, the pretrial process has not been subjected to the type of scrutiny directed at judges’ sentencing decisions. The goal of this project, which uses data on defendants released pretrial in four Arizona counties, was to identify the factors that predict failure to appear (FTA) for court hearings and to determine whether these predictors vary across defendants. We found that the likelihood of FTA was affected by a combination of defendant characteristics, case characteristics, and the jurisdiction where the case was adjudicated; the FTA prediction score, which is obtained from the risk assessment instrument used in all Arizona counties, also had a significant effect on the likelihood of FTA. Discussion focuses on inter-jurisdictional differences in FTA rates, the fact that the type of pretrial release did not predict FTA, and the fact that the defendant’s race/ethnicity affected the FTA prediction score and most of the Public Safety Assessment factors.
KW - failure to appear
KW - pretrial release
KW - public safety assessment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162702258&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/08874034231180806
DO - 10.1177/08874034231180806
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85162702258
SN - 0887-4034
VL - 34
SP - 387
EP - 410
JO - Criminal Justice Policy Review
JF - Criminal Justice Policy Review
IS - 4
ER -