A debtors’ prison in Mississippi
"All of which means that because Anderson was too poor to pay his $170 fine, his overall debt ballooned to $580. His fine more than tripled, solely because he was too poor to pay it."<p>This seems pretty much like the status quo.  If you default on your credit card bill, and ultimately choose minimal payments until it's paid off, rather than bankruptcy, you'll end up paying several times the value of the original loan.<p>That said, if you go to the Biloxi court house's web site, they offer people the ability to do a payment plan for tickets, but they explicitly say "Remember that release on a payment plan is a privilege afforded by the Court and a violation of the payment order will result in your immediate arrest."  I think that's pretty terrible since in this post-6th-amendment society, "arrest" is frequently indistinguishable from "imprisonment".  Debt, especially something so trivial, should be a civil matter.