“I think we go way too far with the war on drugs,” Paul said. “People want to be tougher and tougher. So everybody wants to act like they were tough on crime. But as a consequence, we ended up with a lot of injustice.”

Robert Presswood, the barbershop’s owner, said he liked what he heard from Paul and is glad he and other presidential candidates are discussing criminal justice reform.

“That’s real big for the young, black youth,” Presswood said. “It’s a big issue. Any time you got a person going to prison for 15, 20 years for a non-violent crime, it’s ridiculous.”

Paul has been in the second half of the expansive GOP field in polls on the race in Iowa. He was removed from the main group for the most recent Republican debate, and instead of participating in the secondary debate, he did numerous media interviews and took an active role on social media.

Paul said he thinks the strategy maximized his exposure.

“Our preference would be to be in the debate and not have the (Republican) party exclude us. I think the party made a big mistake. I think they dealt us a dirty, rotten, no-good deal,” Paul said. “But we made the best of it, and I think in the end we probably had more coverage.”