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SALEM, MO. • In Dent County, poverty isn’t an accident. It’s an industry.

Perhaps that’s why Associate Circuit Court Judge Brandi Baird didn’t want me in her courtroom on Thursday.

It was payment review hearing day, which is to say Baird was asking about 50 poor people who have already completed their sentences to come in and offer an explanation as to why their court costs — from a few hundred bucks to several thousand — hadn’t been paid off.

Baird is a collection agent, and her chief henchman is Lisa Blackwell, who works for the private probation company MPPS. Together, they use the judicial system in one of the poorest counties in Missouri to make sure folks who are down on their luck have little chance to climb out from their debts.

I was there on Thursday to see what happened to Brooke Bergen.

You might remember her. She’s the woman I wrote about last month who got arrested for shoplifting an $8 mascara tube from the local Walmart. Bergen has the sort of back story that would inspire one of the movies or television episodes based in the Ozarks that seem to be all the rage these days. She’s fought opioid addiction. Her mother died when she was 15. She never met her father. She got married early to get out of the foster care system. She lost a baby three years ago.

Despite all of that trauma, she’s determined. She’s strong. She’s brave.

But all of that is back story. This is a story about shoplifting.

Bergen, 30, pleaded guilty and got a suspended sentence of a year in jail. As long as she fulfilled the conditions of her bond, she would spend little time behind bars.

This is where Blackwell comes in. Everybody who appears before Baird and bonds out of jail or pleads guilty ends up on a form of probation with the privately operated MPPS. Blackwell isn’t elected, but she has her own chair in Baird’s courtroom, right next to the prosecutor.

During payment review hearings — which aren’t defined in statute and don’t exist in Missouri’s urban court circuits — Blackwell stands up when the defendant’s name is called and tells Baird whether they’ve met their conditions. Those conditions often include twice weekly drug tests at a cost of $30 a week, even if the offense has nothing to do with drugs. Blackwell sometimes orders random drug tests. Miss her call? Arrive late to an appointment?

You’re going to jail.

That’s what happened to Bergen. She did more than a year in jail on the shoplifting charge because she didn’t answer one of Blackwell’s calls. This is not an uncommon experience in Dent County.

After her time in jail, Bergen got the bill: more than $15,900. It is what many Missouri counties call a “board bill.� Get convicted of a crime and you pay about $50 a day for your confinement, regardless of the charge. Meanwhile, in some cases, the county also bills the state.

Don’t have the money? Baird schedules you for a payment review hearing, and another, and another, all the while threatening you with more jail if you don’t pay.

The underfunded Missouri State Public Defender’s office is trying to stop this practice, pushing cases in all three appeals courts in the state, arguing the practice is akin to the state operating illegal debtors prisons.

The day before her hearing, Bergen had $60 in her pocket. She rented a room for a week in Rolla, not sure where she’d be after her day in court.

“Judge Baird threatened me with jail if I didn’t make a substantial payment,� she told me. She planned to spend the rest of the day trying to borrow some more money, to be able to make a $100 payment. “Three figures seems more substantial to me. I’m freaking out. I really am afraid she’s going to put me back in jail.�

Bergen came up with the extra $40. But I almost didn’t get to see the relief on her face when she told Baird that she had made a payment. When I got to court, where dozens upon dozens of defendants line up and are allowed in one at a time as they check in, the head bailiff said he needed to speak with me. He asked for my identification. He went back to speak to the judge. Then he took me into a small room, shut the door, and told me I couldn’t attend court.

The judge said for me to be there I would have to follow a Supreme Court rule that requires the media to request access, the bailiff told me. That rule only applies to requesting audio and video recording, I responded. You can’t keep a reporter — or any citizen — out of a public court hearing with no cause. I asked to speak with the judge.

Though he had just returned from her chambers for a conversation, he told me she wasn’t there. It was five minutes before court was to begin.

A few minutes later, the bailiff waved me in.

Bergen didn’t go to jail. Nobody else did either. Not on this day. They came one by one and explained how hard they were working, at a job or community service, to try to make payments. One man handed Blackwell a wad of cash to be in compliance. She said she’d get him a receipt later. Baird complimented some of them for their efforts. But Blackwell stood and told the judge several times that some people were out of compliance.

Those folks will be back in a month or two for a probation violation hearing. The cash bail will be high. The others will be back in January, taking half a day off of a minimum wage job hoping a $60 payment keeps them from being locked up.

In Dent County, if you’re poor and you stand before the judge, jail is never far away.