In USA once you got criminal record, by default it stays for rest of life with you. Implications of that may be even more severe than actual punishment.
On the other hand in most of the European countries criminal records are limited and after X years they disappear and you can't legally discriminate based on that.
Some ppl will do something stupid at some point in their life and get a criminal record. Not giving them another chance is a major problem and actually can cause a lot of damage for everyone.
Two thoughts:
1) "systematic screwup of law in the USA" is a pretty good description; another might be "massive market opportunity"
2) "startup trying to [take advantage of market inefficiencies created by] systematic screwup of law in the USA" is also a pretty good description of drug traffickers of all kinds. (I'm not passing judgment; just making an observation. The meta observation is that you can't cheat reality, so when law gets out of whack the gap between Ideal and Actual creates an inefficiency, which savvy entrepreneurs can profit by bridging).
The way Americans have the capacity to acknowledge something intrinsically fucked up about their society, and see it as a business opportunity regardless is something I both admire, and despair over.