One of our great romantic national myths is that no matter what you have done wrong, it’s pretty much always possible to remake yourself. But over the course of the last several decades, reinvention has become harder than ever for a huge and growing class of Americans: people with criminal records.
It's a flawed kind of thinking that assumes that someone with a record is more likely to do wrong than someone without one. People can learn from their mistakes, and some people that do wrong have not been caught.
The record is punishment, and many crimes do not warrant perpetual punishment.