What I found specifically cavalier was the statement that they "believe scale will be critical". That sounds like every ML/data driven start up that doesn't have enough data to actually make accurate models. There's a lot of fake it til you make it in startups like these.
What rigor would look like to me is something like:
(1) Do a historical analysis of who skips court and why.
(2) Come up with a plausible intervention strategy to solve problems identified in (1)
(3) Test your strategy in a well designed pilot and calculate it's effectiveness
The parent said that qualitative and quantitative analysis will be used, and that technology is not the only solution. That is hardly cavalier imo.