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Ryder has been in and out of jail before. Every time, the system claimed it was “holding her accountable,” but never once did it give her a way out. I watched her today, standing unsteady, eyes glazed, clutching a fresh citation from the Waterbury police — a court date that could, on paper, be her chance at recovery. She tore it apart and threw it in the garbage.
In her drugged-out, broken voice, she kept repeating: “It’s only a citation… I’m going to keep going to that parking lot. I have no choice. I’m not stopping.”
She doesn’t trust case workers. She doesn’t believe the system will help her. To Ryder, the citation is just another meaningless piece of paper. Another step toward a jail cell that won’t heal her. Another reminder that when she falls, there’s no one to catch her.
Her family once tried to save her the only way they could — by forcing her into a program. For a moment, she fought. She tried so hard to stay sober. But when it ended, she wasn’t given stable housing or a support network. Instead, she was dropped back into Cherry Street in Waterbury, left to survive in a tent, in a place where no one can last twenty minutes without someone offering drugs or demanding that she sell herself again.
That isn’t recovery. That isn’t rehabilitation. That’s abandonment dressed up as “treatment.”
And Ryder isn’t alone. According to the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research, prostitution is charged as a class A misdemeanor — carrying up to a year in jail — but most cases end with either fines or diversionary programs. Yet without housing, long-term recovery, or trauma-informed support, these citations do little more than cycle women through court, jail, and the streets.
In 2023, Waterbury police announced several prostitution stings, issuing citations in the very same commuter parking lots Ryder says she returns to. But for women like her, this revolving door is not deterrence — it’s despair.
When a woman is pushed into this cycle — citation, jail, release, tent, relapse — we are not saving her. We are trafficking her through neglect. Each system that fails her is another hand pushing her back into the streets, another reminder that survival here costs your body and your soul.
Ryder’s words echo like a warning: “I have no choice. I’m not stopping.”
Her story shows us that until Connecticut invests in real solutions — long-term housing, addiction treatment that doesn’t end at discharge, and court systems that treat women as survivors instead of statistics — these torn-up citations will keep piling up. And Ryder, like so many others, will keep slipping further from survival.
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