By Courtney J. Schrader, Software Product Owner, Judicial
Information Services
and Meg Green, Experience Architect, Pillar Technology
Appearing for scheduled court dates. Paying your ticket by the due date. Filing the right paperwork for your grandma’s
estate on time. With the new MiCOURT
Reminders tool, you can now receive
court-related reminders as text messages just like the dentist, coach, and the
grocery store send.
Value to the Public/Value to the Court
Depending on the court process and the type of case, a
missed hearing may result in a default judgment, a bench warrant, and
additional court fees. Missing payment
deadlines may result in a court date (which, if missed, becomes a bench
warrant) and late fees. Of course, an
active warrant leaves you subject to arrest at any time. One of the main goals of MiCOURT Reminders is
to decrease the number of these “no-shows” for court dates and improve timely
compliance with court orders.
Another goal of MiCOURT Reminders is to reduce the amount of
time clerks spend handling cases when someone does not pay or appear. In some courts, there is at least one staff
member dedicated to calling people to remind them of their payment due date. In addition, courts are spending $15,000 or
more annually on postage to mail delinquent notices and bench warrants. Improving the appearance rate using text
message reminders should cascade into reduced costs through reduced mailings,
while also freeing up some of the 5-8 hours that clerks spend preparing mail
every week. Other interested parties—victims,
the media, attorneys—can also be notified of hearing dates through MiCOURT
Reminders. Each person who knows they
will receive a text reminder is one less person who needs to call the court.
The text reminder does not replace the required “Notice to
Appear” form that is often provided weeks or months before the court date. By sending a text reminder a few days before
the hearing, we hope to improve the overall appearance rate, similar to that
seen in a program in New York City that reduced failure-to-appear rates by more
than 25 percent through the use of text messaging.
Why Text Messaging?
Research shows that at least 50 percent of people surveyed preferred
receiving communication through text messaging versus a phone call. Also, when available, approximately half of
those surveyed opted to receive text messages from companies even when the
messages were advertising based. Other
top reasons for signing up for text message services included personalized
messaging and reducing the need to call or visit a website to obtain
information.
How it Works
The MiCOURT Reminders service, offered by Judicial Information
Services (JIS), will send a text reminder two business days before a scheduled
hearing date; this timing allows parties to make work or childcare arrangements
if necessary. Currently in pilot with the
54B District Court in East Lansing, reminders can be sent to anyone who signs
up for any public case. The clerks are
offering to sign up defendants when they appear for arraignments and pretrials
or call to request informal hearings. In
some cases, both the defendant and their attorney have signed up for the
reminders. Reminders can also be sent
for civil cases, which may be very helpful for people representing themselves (e.g.,
college students in landlord-tenant cases).
When someone signs up in a court, they will receive a
consent request message. A response of
“Yes” or “Start” is required to receive reminders. Two business days before a scheduled hearing,
the application compares the calendar with all the cases and phone numbers signed
up for hearings and then sends hearing reminders after court hours through an
automated job. Each message includes the
case number, hearing description, date/time, and court location (court number
and city). If someone later signs up for
more cases or additional reminder types from the same court, he or she will
receive a confirmation message listing the case number(s), but the initial
consent still applies. The court staff
has the ability to remove phone numbers from individual cases, but to stop all messages
from a specific court the phone owner simply replies “Stop” or “Cancel” to any
previous message.
We plan to add payment due reminders in the near future,
followed by making the service available to circuit and probate courts with
additional reminder types based on the unique needs of the court customers. Other potential features include customizing
the timing and content of messages per hearing type, notifying subscribers of
rescheduled (adjourned) hearings, and ad hoc instant messaging in the event of
an unplanned court closure (e.g., due to a power outage).
Value Realized
More than 350 people have signed up for reminders through
D54B in East Lansing since late April, mostly for hearings on traffic and
criminal cases. As of early August, nearly
400 hearing reminder messages were sent. At the end of July, the 44th District Court in
Royal Oak was added. In the first two
weeks the court signed up more than 100 people to receive reminders. It is still too early to quantify a reduction
in failure-to-appear rates and the associated processing work required;
however, the program has proven to be very popular so far with more than 90
percent of case parties signing up for reminders.
How We Did It
MiCOURT Reminders is the newest member of MiCOURT Suite
Tools, a collection of applications with a mission to provide small but
powerful pieces of value to courts using JIS’s case management systems. The existing tools include Calendar
Integration for displaying a read-only version of the judges’ calendars from
the case management system in Outlook or a mobile phone; Court Display with
Public URL to display the court’s schedule on screens in the courthouse and/or
the court’s website; a digital court recording integration (DCR Integration);
and MiCOURT Case Search, a publicly available record search.
Developed using Agile principles, the development team built
the initial application in less than three months before partnering with East
Lansing’s 54B District Court to pilot and test the service. Staff at D54B provide regular feedback through
a product owner, who then turns this feedback into new features for the
development team to incorporate into the application. Features are evaluated and prioritized based
on value to the courts, complexity, and location in the overall road map for
MiCOURT Reminders. Our pilot partners
also participate in usability testing, a process where we present a mocked up
version of a new feature before the developers start work to help ensure we are
delivering the most valuable features first.
How to Get It
MiCOURT Reminders is currently in pilot phase for courts
using JIS’s District Court case management system (DCS).
The application should be available for
additional district courts in mid- to late-Fall.
As further development is completed, courts
using the TCS, PCS, and CCS case management systems will be able to sign-up for
the service; however, we don’t have a specific date for these courts yet.
Courts interested in signing up for MiCOURT
Reminders should contact the JIS Service Delivery team (
jis@courts.mi.gov
or 888-339-1547) to be added to the list.
In 2016 the Capital Region Community Foundation awarded a
grant to the City of Lansing’s Office of Financial Empowerment for a pilot
project called, “In Reach.”[1]
The project’s goal was to assist
individuals either entering or leaving incarceration to facilitate successful
reentry into society upon release. The
Office of Financial Empowerment found three major financial problems facing
individuals released from prison: child support accrued during incarceration
resulting in unmanageable debt; identity theft; and loss of bank accounts.
Staff at the Hall of Justice in Lansing kicked off the holiday season with our annual holiday luncheon, which included a silent auction. 
Proceeds of more than $1,300 was split between End Violent Encounters (EVE, a women's shelter) and the Greater Lansing Food Bank. 
These are some of the donations at this year's auction.