September Democratic candidates debate: on Drugs

Cory Booker: Release 17,000 who are unjustly incarcerated for drug use

So much of this comes down to privilege. We have a criminal justice system that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent.

We can specifically and demonstrably now show that there are 17,000 people unjustly incarcerated in America, and all of us should come forward and say, when I am president of the United States, we will release them.

Joe Biden: Addicts should go to rehab & expunge records, not prison

BIDEN: We're in a situation now where there are so many people who are in jail and shouldn't be in jail. The whole means by which this should change is the whole model has to change. We should be talking about rehabilitation. Nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime. [Under Obama] we released 36,000 people from the federal prison system. Nobody should be in jail for a drug problem. They should be going directly to a rehabilitation. We build more rehabilitation centers, not prisons. I'm the guy that put in the drug courts to divert people from the criminal justice system. And so we have to change the whole way we look at this. [People] who got in prison for marijuana--they shouldn't be in there; that should be a misdemeanor. They should be out and their record should be expunged. Every single right should be returned.

Kamala Harris: Opposed marijuana legalization, but currents have changed

HARRIS: I made a decision that, if I was going to have the ability to reform the system, I would try to do it from the inside. And so I took on the position that allowed me, without asking permission, to create one of the first in the nation initiatives that was a model and became a national model around people who were arrested for drugs and getting them jobs. I created one of the first in the nation trainings for a police officer on the issue of racial bias and the need to reform the system.