Amanda Underwood is a mother of five who works at a fast-food restaurant in Alexander City, Alabama. She recently borrowed her friend’s car to pick up food for her friend’s children and received a traffic ticket for driving with a suspended license. Underwood is already having trouble making ends meet, and if she cannot afford to pay off the ticket, she may once again end up washing police cars to earn her way out of jail and back to her job and family.

In Alexander City, where nearly 30 percent of the city’s 15,000 residents live below the poverty line, people who receive a fine for traffic violations and misdemeanors in court are told by the judge to go to the “back room” behind the judge’s bench. In the back room, which is not open to public, they must pay the fine in full before the end of business hours, or they are booked into the jail located in another part of the same building, according to a federal complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on September 8.