Too many Philly police are no-shows in court, derailing cases and undermining our justice system

A staggering number of cases set for trial in Philadelphia don’t proceed because someone essential to the hearing did not show up.

Court absenteeism, usually called “failure to appear,” has gotten plenty of attention when it comes to defendants. We have intensive and invasive systems in place to prevent no-shows, including cash bail, pretrial detention, and pretrial supervision, during which defendants are tracked by a pretrial services officer.

But the policy discussion around failure to appear has missed an important fact: Most of those who fail to appear are not defendants. They are police officers, civilian witnesses, and private lawyers.

We analyzed data from the Philadelphia courts and the District Attorney’s Office between 2010 and 2020. Over that decade, an essential police officer, civilian witness, or lawyer failed to appear for at least one hearing in 53% of all cases. While defendants missed their court dates in only 19% of cases, police officers failed to appear in 31% of cases for which they were subpoenaed.

Most of the data preceded the tenure of current District Attorney Larry Krasner, and the failure to appear rates didn’t change when he took office.

Failure to appear on this scale has serious consequences. When an essential party doesn’t show, everyone who did come to court has to leave and come back another day, often to repeat the same futile process. If you have ever spent a day at court in Philadelphia, chances are you know this firsthand.

Having officers miss court in one-third of their cases — in violation of a court order — does more than create hassle and stymie cases. Police witnesses are literal embodiments of the criminal justice system, and testifying in court is part of their job. When they fail to appear, it undermines the system’s legitimacy. The Police Department should take responsibility for fixing its abysmal appearance rates.

Cases also get derailed when witnesses don’t show up. Our calculations suggest that as many as 32,000 Philadelphia cases were dropped between 2010 and 2020 because a police officer or civilian witness failed to appear. According to a report jointly prepared by multiple city agencies, including the District Attorney’s Office and the Police Department, roughly half of the cases involving illegal gun possession were dismissed because either a victim, witness, or police officer didn’t appear in court.

» READ MORE: No-show defendants are an insult to courts | Editorial

Civilian witnesses aren’t paid to go to court, and there are plenty of reasons why they might not want to. In the past, policy conversations about witnesses failing to appear have focused on witness intimidation. That does happen and is a serious problem.

But a central reason why civilian witnesses (and defendants) miss court is that going to court is an ordeal. Court dates are frequently set without regard for serious conflicts. Some people never receive notice of a court date at all because our notice mechanisms are archaic (often relying on unreliable snail mail, for instance). Court websites are confusing. Attending court means arranging transportation and childcare, missing work, and waiting — sometimes for hours — for your case to be called. After all that, the case will probably be continued anyway because someone else failed to show.

This is a problem we can fix. Coming to court doesn’t have to be so hard. Dentists’ offices manage to schedule appointments at specific times and provide effective notice through email and text messaging. Our criminal court system should be able to do the same.

This is a problem we can fix.

This is especially important in domestic violence cases, where the failure to appear rate of victims is astronomical: 70%. In addition to logistical hurdles, some victims skip court because they fear retaliation, because they do not want the alleged perpetrator convicted or imprisoned, and for a complex mix of other reasons.

Regardless, the fact that 70% of domestic violence victims opt out of the proceeding suggests that, for them, the criminal legal system is not providing an effective solution. Clearly, we need to rethink our approach to domestic violence, either by providing victims more support within the criminal justice system or shifting resources and energy toward preventive and noncriminal approaches to the problem.

The big picture here is that criminal cases — a lot of criminal cases — are stalling because police officers, civilian witnesses, and private attorneys don’t show up. Getting the machinery of justice to run smoothly will require focused, holistic thinking about failure to appear in court.

Sandy Mayson, Aurelie Ouss, and Megan Stevenson are professors at, respectively, the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the University of Pennsylvania department of criminology, and the University of Virginia School of Law. Lindsay Graef is a doctoral candidate in criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.