We seek to increase voluntary appearances for people with outstanding Warrants to Arrest (WTA) through reminder phone calls from Māori Wardens and Police. This Auckland-based project follows a proof-of-concept trial in the Eastern District, in which Māori Wardens made phone calls to people with outstanding WTAs and we compared voluntary appearances for those who were reached via phone to those who were not.

While this first trial showed indicative evidence that phone calls may be effective, it is possible our results were driven by underlying differences in those who were contactable vs uncontactable. In order to produce compelling evidence, we will randomly assign people with outstanding WTAs to receive a phone call from a Police officer, a Māori Warden, or receive no phone call (a control group) and compare the voluntary appearance rate across all three groups.

As was the case in the Eastern District, Police are leading this project on implementation, change management and project management. BSA are supporting with behavioural insights, experimental design, data analysis and report writing.