FERGUSON, Mo. There was a time when pretty much everyone Tony Rice knew had a warrant out for their arrest.

Rice himself has been locked up over traffic tickets so many times he lost track of how often he went to jail during the seven years it took him to pay off the debts. Once, when he showed up for his court date, officers called him into a back room and arrested him on the spot. But theres one particular trip to Fergusons packed jail that sticks out in Rices mind. This was before police officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, before that turned Rices hometown into a hashtag, back when Ferguson was just another town in St. Louis County, churning out warrants to drum up cash.

My neighbor was in there, Rice said. He saw me, he just started hollering at me, like Hey, hey, whats going on? It was really weird. He was in there for a traffic ticket also.

Three years after the Ferguson unrest, its a bit more difficult to find such dramatic illustrations of the efforts undertaken by Ferguson and its neighboring municipalities to use their cops and courts to fill city coffers , practices that stoked the anger that finally exploded in the streets here in August, 2014.

Back then, it seemed as if everyone had a horror story about dealing with a fractured municipal system in sprawling St. Louis County. The tales often involved a trip to jail over debt. Dozens of small municipalities, many created last century by whites who wanted to keep out blacks, were wreaking havoc on the lives of the same people these places were created to exclude. Parking tickets that elsewhere might lead to a vehicle being impounded instead resulted in a human being seized. Citizens who couldnt afford excessive fines and fees sat in jail for days, weeks even, in inhumane conditions. Citizens called the system out of control, crazy, racist, sickening.

For journalists from HuffPost and other outlets visiting municipal courts in the months after the Ferguson unrest, the problems were obvious. The courtrooms, including some that operated out of what used to be family homes, were packed. The lines outside were long. Prosecutors would sit up on the bench alongside the judges. Kids were banned. Sometimes the public was excluded. Judges were explicit in their threats to jail people unless they ponied up. And the numbers were undeniable: plenty of St. Louis County municipalities were getting huge chunks of their budget through their courts.

This week, in conjunction with the Listen to America bus tour, HuffPost headed back to court. Specifically, we visited courts in Maplewood, Brentwood, Ferguson, Cool Valley, Bellefontaine Neighbors and St. Ann (which was hosting a session for the small city of Charlack). We tagged along with an attorney with ArchCity Defenders a nonprofit civil rights law firm as he appeared in three courts in a single night. We saw some signs of change. Kids are allowed in now. So is the public. The jails arent as crowded, the lines arent as long, and the fines arent as steep.

But the problems are still there, as is the fractured municipal court structure that grew out of racism and segregation.