A friend wrote bad checks and now owes two banks several thousand dollars. She would like to repay the banks without being arrested. Is that possible?

Possibly--it depends on (1) whether she wrote them more-or-less innocently, not knowing they'd be bad (if she did it deliberately, it's fraud); (2) what the bank knows or thinks it knows about why she wrote them; and (3) whether it's already been reported to the police as fraud.

There is no way to be absolutely certain, since you cannot predict or control the action of the banks. As a general rule, volunatarily coming forward to pay and fix the mistake will usually put people and institutions in a mood to accept it as a mistake, not prosecute it as a crim.