Rikers Island, our jail here, is the largest mental health provider in our state. It’s horrific. You get released from Rikers Island, you get a coupl… - Tiffany Cabán

Being endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, folks like her, like Senator Jessica Ramos, Senator Julia Salazar, for me, it moved me in a way that said, “Well, I can do this. I can enter this space and have an impact.” Because, you know, as a 31-year-old queer Latina from a working-class family, never in a million years did I think that I would be entering a space like this. But I feel not only that I have the right experience, but that we are so well equipped to get the job done.

We have taken public health issues and punted them to a criminal justice system. What we should be doing instead is going to the root causes of the instability. You can tie it back to the bad actors who are destabilizing entire communities that then drive crime, whether it is low-level quality of life crime or violent crime. It’s all connected. As a public defender I represent clients who the system criminalizes for their substance use disorder, rather than prosecuting a doctor who’s overprescribing opioids. Or it prosecutes a client who is seeking shelter, rather than a bad landlord who’s unlawfully evicting or a predatory lender who’s stealing somebody’s home. I represent people who are accused of stealing from their employers when in fact their employers are misclassifying workers, stealing their wages, taking advantage of our undocumented communities, preventing people from unionizing. When you think about it that way it’s a no-brainer, right? These are things that seem intuitive, but again there are people profiting off of this. That really the reason why those types of prosecutions aren’t prioritized, and they should be.

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.