JENNINGS • Not long ago, this might have been the start of a story of a life coming undone.

In March 2015, the city of Jennings put Michelle Binion-Wright on a payment plan to satisfy a $654 fine for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. A year ago, she said, she lost her job as an in-home nurse and stopped making payments. Her balance remains $364.

“I just don’t have it,” she said.

As recently as several months ago, the Jennings court would have ordered her back to court, then issued an arrest warrant if she didn’t show. Binion-Wright could have been arrested and jailed until she posted bail under the original case and a new charge of “failure to appear.” If she didn’t pay her fine, she would have been at risk of being arrested again. Maybe several times. And time she spent in jail for failure to appear would not have satisfied the original case. Jennings would have kept jailing her until she paid.

The jails — particularly in Jennings and St. Ann — were full of people whose original infractions were traffic tickets or ordinance violations that would not have warranted incarceration in the first place. And they were being held because they could not afford to post bail.