What Predicts Failure to Appear for Court Hearings?

Abstract

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.