The plaintiffs say that once they were sent to county jail, they were manhandled or ridiculed by jail officials. Paula Pullum, a 48-year-old plaintiff with severe medical problems — including a heart ailment — claims that when she submitted a letter detailing her health issues and required medications, a jailer tore it up.

Plaintiffs say that even when the company was aware of their indigence, they were not told they could apply to have their court costs waived. When they asked for a waiver, they said, they were denied or told they would first have to make payments for several months, pay for the form, pass a $20 drug test and pay a $25 fee to get a court hearing.

Providence Community Corrections targeted probationers who had some fixed income, like disability payments, and repeatedly threatened them with jail if they did not bring in money, the lawsuit says. On at least two occasions, receipts submitted by two plaintiffs show, their entire payments were applied to their probation fees while their court cost balance remained the same. One plaintiff, Cindy Rodriguez, originally owed the court $578. After a year on probation, though she had paid nearly that much to the company, she still owed $512, she says in the lawsuit.

Ms. Rodriguez, who said she was in continual back pain and subsisted on disability payments, said she was never told she could seek an indigence waiver. When she finally learned she could and asked for one, she was told it was too late, she said.

The Supreme Court has held that probation cannot be revoked for failure to pay a fine unless a court first finds the defendant is able to pay. Tennessee law does not allow probation to be revoked for failure to pay.

But the plaintiffs say that law was routinely ignored or that the company trumped up reasons to claim probation violations