58% of judges report increasing jury summons no-shows with no enforcement

Nearly 58% of judges surveyed by the National Center for State Courts reported noticing an increase in people ignoring jury summons entirely. Nationally, non-response and failure-to-appear rates rose from 14% in 2019 to 16% in 2022, with some urban courts exceeding 33%. In Harris County, TX, the rate hit 48%. Despite the fact that ignoring a jury summons is technically punishable by fines ($250-$1,500) or contempt of court, enforcement is virtually nonexistent. Courts lack the administrative resources to track down and prosecute tens of thousands of non-respondents, and judges are reluctant to jail people for avoiding a civic duty that pays $15-$50/day. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: people learn through word of mouth that nothing happens if you ignore a summons, so more people ignore them, which shrinks the jury pool further, which increases the burden on the shrinking number of people who do comply. Those who comply are disproportionately older, whiter, wealthier, and more conservative — making jury composition increasingly unrepresentative. This persists because enforcement would require courts to spend more on tracking non-respondents than they save on juror fees, and because penalizing non-response with fines would disproportionately harm the low-income populations already least able to serve.