This is part of an ongoing series looking at the impact of missed court appearances in Missouri. Check out part one in this series, Mass Incarceration in Your Backyard, and part two, Court Reminders Should Be Accessible for All, for additional context about the issue.
We need innovative solutions to the problems in our communities, especially when it comes to reducing the number of people incarcerated in jails. Technological tools and collaborative community-based initiatives can help keep people out of jail, as this weekly perspective will explore. Automated court reminders reduce missed court appearances and, in turn, jail incarceration. Empower Missouri is exploring ways to expand the use of automated reminders in our state. We have convened a steering committee of stakeholders on this topic to provide input and direction as we explore ways to expand the use of court reminders in Missouri and discuss other innovative solutions to reduce the number of our community members incarcerated in jail.
This Weekly Perspective spotlights one of the members of the steering committee who is helping people get in good standing with the courts and avoid incarceration. The Tap In Center is a warrant resolution program run by St. Louis County Library, in collaboration with multiple county and municipal court systems.
Partner Spotlight: The Tap In Center
Conversation with Miranda Gibson, Assistant Manager of the Justice Services Department with St. Louis County Library
What is your role at the library?
The Justice Services Department is a new department at St. Louis County Library. I started at the library in January 2024 as a Justice Services Specialist, and that was the first dedicated Justice Services role at the library. The library was serving justice-impacted folks before I came on board, but those efforts were spread amongst several departments, and there wasn’t a centralized, coordinated effort to support that population as a whole. They wanted to pull it all together and have someone coordinate all those services and get more library services out into the reentry community, and also into different prisons and jails in our service area. One of the projects within that realm is the Tap In Center.
How did the Tap In Center come to be?
We hosted the Tap In Center (TIC) at the Florissant Valley Library for four years prior to my coming on board at the library. I was working with the MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge grant in 2020, and we worked with several other partners, including the Bail Project, the Public Defenders’ office, the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office, and the St. Louis County Circuit Court, to form the Tap In Center. We approached the library to host this program at one of their branches, and they were very enthusiastic about it. It was way easier than I thought it would be to get them to say yes! The library began hosting TIC in September 2020. It has gone super well.
The Tap In Center is a warrant resolution program where we help people who have gotten a warrant for missing a court date in a St. Louis County court. They can come to us instead of going to turn themselves in or instead of getting arrested if they get pulled over for that warrant. We can request that the judge reset the court date and cancel the warrant so they can continue on their case free and clear while they’re in the community instead of going to jail for a missed court appearance.
What makes the library a good setting for something like the Tap In Center?
When we were initially thinking about what TIC would look like, we asked ourselves where can we host this kind of program? We want people to come, of course. We want to be able to reset these court dates without someone fearing that they would be arrested if they came in. At first we thought, we all work in government buildings, we would easily be able to set up a program in one of our spaces. But then we quickly realized, probably not the best idea, because we don’t want people to think it’s a trap if they’re coming to us for warrant resolution services. So we did not want to have it at the justice center, at the courthouse, at a police building, or any traditional government entity. Where is somewhere that the community already goes, that is trusted, that is easy to get to, and easy to park at or access via public transportation? We wanted to try to mitigate those barriers as much as we could. We also wanted to do some unconventional hours. The library was kind of a perfect spot that fulfilled our wishlist.
What are some of the common reasons that folks miss court and subsequently have warrants issued?
The majority of people who miss court are not trying to run away from the case. Life just happens. By far the most common reason that we hear from over half of our clients is that they didn’t know about that court date. And they eventually find out about it. They’re applying for a job, or they’re applying to renew some kind of occupational license or getting a new driver’s license, and they find out that they can’t do the thing they’re trying to do because of this warrant. Or they might get pulled over for speeding. When we look it up in Casenet, we often see that the summons was sent to an old address that they hadn’t lived at in years. We have seen this even more since the tornado last year. So if we had an automated court reminder system that would be tied to someone’s phone or their email, that would by far be a better way of contacting folks for court. Those pieces of information often stay with the client longer than a residential address will. So if we had automated reminders, that would eliminate the need for people to have to go through the warrant process and have to come to us.
Learn more about the Tap-In Center aquí. If you have experience with a missed court date in Missouri, please consider sharing your story. Stay tuned for further updates about our work on court reminders and additional spotlights on organizations engaged in innovative solutions to reduce jail incarceration.
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