It's strange. You seem to know a lot, but perhaps have little regard for your audience when making an argument based on what you know. (I mean, you include a bunch of links so if I had extra free time I could study what you've studied and perhaps follow your conclusions?) I don't have the kind of time your arguments (as presented) would require.
As far as restoring children to their mothers, I favor Tyler Cowen's proposal:
Let’s take one-tenth of those women [aero note: women in US prisons for any crime who have minor children] and move them from prison to house arrest, combined with electronic monitoring. That would allow for proximity to their children. If the U.S. isn’t plagued by a subsequent wave of violent crime — and I don’t think it will be — let us try the same for yet another tenth. Let’s keep on doing this until it’s obviously not working.
My main concerns about such a proposal would be the incentive for female felons to seek pregnancy as a get-out-of-jail free card. (Just like under the previous and current immigration enforcement regimes there is a perverse incentive for smugglers to claim parenthood of unaccompanied children they are smuggling) I'm not really sure how to avoid that complication.