I would not want to solve the world's problems. For one I do not understand people, the vast majority.
Most of what they do works, it is not the best answer, but one they can deal with.
My answer to poverty would be art lessons. If everyone would study and practice art two hours a week, it would solve unemployment. Cutting the work week to 37 hours would do the same.
Oppertunity created through jobs leads to education and upward mobility.
We seem to have chosen the path of job creation through a prisioner/guard economy.
I agree with the OP, three strikes sounded good, but became a business model, and with the privativation of prisons, with lobbyists, an industry.
Police tend to over charge, for they see armed robbery reduced to trespassing, by an over worked court system.
If you have a lawyer, have studied your crime, it can cost a million to convict you. So a guilty plea to a lesser charge, saves them money and time. They appear to be doing something, which is what being a lawer is about.
These forces collide when the Police charge someone with Felony overtime parking, and they do not understand the game, plead guilty, pay the fine, and on the third count get life without parole.
Under three strikes that is it, over and done with, and someone gets paid for lifetime care.
Lawmakers tend to run for reelection on being tough on crime, but hold there is a second class of white collar crime that gets a prison with a golf course. Their sentance guildlines run in months?
One of their bright ideas was Zero Tolerance, sending a 17 year old to prison for 40 years for a crack rock.
It is not life, they get out, after 20 years, about 600,000 a year. From 17 year old kid, to 37 with 20 years of prison education. This has built some major gangs, run from the inside, what else do they have to do? They know every trick, and have all the experts they need.
They have to have a job, but they do have a network, and outside they have established oppertunities.
So the box thinkers said, put them in a box. Then they need ever larger boxes.
We spend more on prisons than on education. We do not educate prisoners.
Project this out a while, and the whole becomes prisoners or guards, both uneducated.
Some states have had to have early release, because they could not afford it.
Trouble is the kid with the crack rock is a drug offender, and not released, while armed robbers, rapists, burglers, are. The very ones who prey on the people are released, but the ones who lead to reelection are held.
Under three strikes it is set in stone, those can never be released, so people with only two murder convictions are.
I would get tough on crime, life or getting a GED, then for the hard core, second offender, being forced to learn a trade, get an AA, and be paroled to a job paying several times minimum wage. A third offense and it is a BA, or life, and fourth offense is automatic death.
That and art lessons for all, a booming economy, rising standard of living, and higher education for all.
"We has met the enemy and they is us." Pogo