Cabán was born in Queens’ Richmond Hill neighborhood to Puerto Rican parents. Her dad, an elevator mechanic, and her maternal grandfather, an immigrant and military veteran, both struggled with alcoholism, something that later shaped her view of the courts and incarceration. During his worst years, she says, “my grandfather was incredibly physically abusive, to the point where my grandmother left him and my mom dropped out of high school to help support the family. But the man I got to know was this kind, patient, loving abuelo.” As she got older, it bothered her that the criminal justice system didn’t take into account these kinds of complexities. “The current system does not look at a man like my grandfather—a dirt-poor kid from Puerto Rico and a Purple Heart recipient from his service during the Korean War who self-medicated with alcohol—and ask, ‘How have we failed him and how can we now support him?'” she wrote recently. “I always ask that question.”

After graduating from New York Law School, Cabán took a job as a public defender at the Legal Aid Society and later the New York County Defender Services. She soon grew frustrated that many of the people she saw prosecuted and jailed for nonviolent crimes were mentally ill or desperate, and when they were pulled from their housing, jobs, and family, they were further destabilized. In her campaign for DA, Cabán pledges not to charge people for a slew of crimes like drug possession and fare evasion.

And in a stance that sets her apart from her competitors, Cabán would also decline to prosecute sex workers and their clients. In New York, arrests for loitering for prostitution jumped 180 percent from 2017 to 2018, with roughly half of those occurring in Queens, suggesting that sex workers in the borough, especially women of color, are at increased risk of being targeted by law enforcement. Several other candidates have pledged not to prosecute sex workers but to continue charging customers—a tactic that Cabán argues would still drive sex workers underground and make them vulnerable.

Critics argue that leniency toward customers could perpetuate human trafficking. It is “very dangerous to women who have been trafficked and doesn’t really represent a comprehensive criminal justice reform policy that has the protection of women at the center of it,” says City Councilman Rory Lancman, a reformist candidate in the race, who has called himself the “Larry Krasner of Queens” and has worked with the City Council to fund services for people accused of sex-work offenses. Cabán counters that fully decriminalizing the industry will actually help law enforcement fight trafficking, because sex workers might be more likely to ask police for help if they know they won’t lose their jobs or wind up in jail for doing so. 

Cabán also opposes the city’s plan to build or expand jails in four boroughs as a replacement for the eight jails on Rikers Island, which are slated for closure by 2027. “Every time new jails are built throughout this country’s history, they are filled—and overcrowded,” she explains on her website. Queens already has a dormant jail facility that the city wants to make bigger. Cabán thinks this is unnecessary and that the DA’s office should reduce the inmate population by declining to request bail and investing more in community-based services that would be available before offenders are charged or even arrested, no strings attached. She wants constituents to decide how to spend some of the DA office’s budget, particularly the $100 million it has gotten from federal civil asset forfeiture, ideally funneling it to hospitals, schools, job training, and affordable housing for people accused of crimes. “We need to divest from the DA’s office and invest back in our community-based organizations—to do everything we can to prevent initial contact with the criminal justice system in the first place.”

The idea of keeping offenders out of prison and linking them up with housing, health care, and job training isn’t new. In 2011, Seattle began encouraging police to connect drug offenders with housing and health care instead of arresting them. A study by the University of Washington found that people who went through this program, called LEAD, were 58 percent less likely than others to recidivate. And district attorneys across the country fund diversion programs that offer some of these services for low-level offenders and others grappling with poverty and mental health problems. But in Queens, defendants are often pressured to take a conditional plea deal before they are screened for these diversion programs, which can be strict and come with fees. Cabán would not require defendants to plead before this screening. “The rule should be services, then diversion, and almost never should someone be incarcerated,” says her policy director, Alon Gur.

“We need to divest from the DA’s office and invest back in our community-based organizations,” Cabán says.
Some have slammed Cabán’s stance on the replacement for Rikers. Lancman says that without a bigger jail in Queens, inmates would be held farther from their families and would have to travel in and out of the borough for court dates. And others say her aversion to incarceration ignores the reality of what the job is about. “The district attorney’s office is not the public defender—the district attorney is the prosecutor,” adds Lupe Todd-Medina, senior communications adviser for candidate Mina Malik, who worked in the Queens district attorney’s office for 15 years. “Those that need to help, whether they have substance abuse problems or mental health issues—we’re going to help them. But it’s a law enforcement office.”