Tiffany Cabán Quotes

When people ask me for a book recommendation - just one book - this is the one I recommend. Until We Reckon (by Danielle Sered) has been such an incredible resource.

If you want to target true trafficking, then you have to fully decriminalize so that you’re creating a space where survivors and victims can access health care services, can feel comfortable cooperating with the district attorney’s office or law enforcement. Doing anything to drive the behavior underground just increases the risk of harm and violence. You can’t take the middle ground and say “Well, I’m not going to prosecute sex workers but I’m going to prosecute their customers.” Again you are creating an environment where there’s still a fear of decriminalization and there’s serious destabilization.

The second that you introduce somebody to the criminal justice system you are injecting a ton of destabilizing and stigmatizing factors that continue to perpetuate the barriers that those folks are experiencing.

We’re at a time where people are open to redefining what the role of the DA is, because historically it has served a function to punish the poor. It’s been one that has disproportionately criminalized our black and brown and working-class immigrant communities. There is an incredible opportunity for harm reduction by bringing in somebody with more leftist analysis, saying “Hey this isn’t about convictions and sentences, this is about public safety, this is about fairness.” There’s some potential to shape the office, so that it really is a driver for protecting the very folks that have been disproportionately, negatively impacted by our system. It can be, when you have an independent, progressive person at the forefront, a vehicle for holding bad actors accountable who are profiting off of others’ disenfranchisement.

I am a queer Latina from a low-income community. I grew up in South Richmond Hill, Queens and my parents grew up in Woodside housing projects. We’re talking about communities that have been historically over-policed, over-criminalized, but also resource-starved. When we talk about the injustices done by our system, it’s not just people who are accused of crimes, it’s survivors and victims as well. It is a situation of certain folks not having access to the same resources and protections as other folks. My story wasn’t one that I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and got to be a lawyer and got to do all these great things. Really there’s not much that separates me from my clients. What separates me — the only thing that I can point to besides chance and luck — is the fact that my dad got a union gig out of high school. That was game-changing in terms of my access to an education, to health care, to therapy so that I could have reparative experiences around my own trauma that then could lead to a lot of different things like criminal justice system involvement. It’s important to have somebody with that background. Who recognizes that a lot of times, what drives crime or unsafe conditions is instability in people’s lives. Stability, in things like housing, health care, education, equals public safety. These are things that we all should have a right to access. We should bring that perspective into our district attorney’s office and say “Hey, if what we’re supposed to do here is promote public safety, then we should be investing resources in the communities that have suffered because of other people benefiting at their expense.”