Fifty-two arrestees, outfitted in orange and maroon jumpsuits, await their first appearance before a judge. Most are black. All require a public defender. And more than half of them are here, their hands chained against their stomachs, because they missed a court date for a minor crime, triggering an arrest warrant.

Lauren Anderson, a public defender and attorney supervisor for Municipal Court, is furious as she looks over a list of their names. "It doesn't make any sense," she says. "We're not making the city any safer," she said. "We're only hurting these people, and we just keep doing it over and over. It's infuriating."

There are more than 56,000 outstanding warrants in New Orleans's Municipal Court, dating to 2002, according to city data. A staggering 1 of 7 adults in the country's 50th-largest city have a warrant out for their arrest.

Typically, the crime is failing to appear for scheduled court dates for minor, nonviolent offenses that do not carry a jail sentence, including panhandling and fishing without a license. (Two notable exceptions are battery and domestic abuse, which account for roughly 6 percent of all the warrants.) Anderson characterizes most of them as old nuisance crimes bogging down an already overburdened criminal justice system.