What these cities lack in tax receipts, they collect through fines and fees stemming from minor municipal violations. These include vehicle violations such as expired registration, speeding, or seat-belt tickets, and other offenses like “saggy pants” or property-upkeep tickets (everything from chipped paint to trash-can violations). Simply put, these are not serious crimes. And, to make matters worse, such laws are unevenly enforced. City governments, incentivized by their own budget goals and shortfalls, encourage local police to increase the number of citations in order to drive up revenue. Municipal courts are the mechanism for collection.

Qiana Williams is a 37-year-old single mother and long-time resident of St. Louis. Her story is representative of the damage that the broken municipal justice system can have on the lives of the individuals sucked into it. According to Williams, her problems began at the age of 19 when she was ticketed for driving without a license. A couple of months later, after missing a court date, she was arrested and held on a $250 bond, an amount that she could not afford to pay. It eventually became clear that she was unable to pay the bond, even with the threat of continued detention, and she was released—without ever appearing before a judge and with the underlying fine still outstanding, she recalls.

Since that time, Williams has spent more than four months total in jail in a spiral of unpaid tickets, warrants, and ever-increasing fines that she could not pay because she lacked the necessary income. Hopeful that she would be able to lift herself and her family out of this cycle and pay off her tickets with a college degree, she enrolled in school. She was just 12 credits shy of her degree when she was arrested again for unpaid traffic tickets, she said.

On one occasion in 2001, Williams called the police after being assaulted by an ex-boyfriend. According to her, when officers arrived, they asked her to step outside to identify the perpetrator. Once outside, she was arrested on an outstanding warrant stemming from parking tickets. The man who assaulted her was released. She says she was told (wrongly) that she could not press charges with an outstanding warrant.

As is almost always the case, Williams’s family suffered with her during her repeated detentions. Williams’s 10-year-old daughter, Royal, has been deprived of her mother on Christmas, New Year’s, and many other nights, because her mother did not have the resources to pay off municipal-court fines.

Walk into one of these courts on any given day—in Ferguson, Pagedale, Pine Lawn, Hazelwood, St. Ann, or easily 40 other municipalities across St. Louis County—and there will be row after row of poor black residents who have been called in to pay penitence for their wrongdoing. Some who are unable to pay are taken straight to the local jail. More often, when people fail to appear because they know that they cannot pay, arrest warrants are issued. Days, weeks, months, or even years later (often times during a routine traffic stop), they will be arrested and taken to jail on this warrant, with the threat of continued confinement serving as a new incentive for immediate payment, no matter the resultant hardships of securing such funds. Detentions stemming from unpaid municipal fines can last anywhere from minutes to weeks or, in extreme cases, even months. This is the reality of the local justice system for some of the most vulnerable residents of Greater St. Louis.