Former Vice President Joe Biden said that no one should go to jail for committing a nonviolent crime.

Biden joined nine other Democratic presidential candidates at the third debate of the primary in Houston on Thursday. While talking on criminal justice reform, Biden said that the aim of criminal justice reform should be taking nonviolent criminals out of jail and sending them directly to rehabilitation.

"We are in a situation now where there are so many people who are in jail and shouldn't be in jail," Biden said. "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."

"When we were in the White House, we released 36,000 people from the federal prison system," Biden said. "Nobody should be in jail for a drug problem. They should be going directly to a rehabilitation [center]."

A Biden aide later said that the former vice president had been referring to "non-violent drug related crimes."