TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 27, 2022

Shelby County Pretrial Services has expanded its simple summons program, which sends defendants text message reminders about their court dates, the Commercial Appeal reports. All defendants released from custody pending court disposition are placed in the program if they provide a valid cellphone number. Before the program’s 2021 pilot, 73% of those eligible showed up for their court dates. As of this month, that number has risen to 97%. Pretrial services is now looking to add new features to the text messaging service, like allowing defendants to text back with questions that would be answered by staff.