Police Checks

Nobody really believes in rehabilitation, nobody really trusts you to disclose your past. Furthermore, society is a club we are born members of and only really stand to lose that membership.
I have to get a police check done and you know I have no prior convictions. I even have to simultaneously get a 'Working With Children' check done even though my volunteer is 40 years old. Had I prior convictions I wouldn't be allowed to volunteer my time. I probably wouldn't be able to get my job who knows.
I thought about the old days in a lot of countries you were marked as a criminal, by a tattoo on the forehead or eyelids, a hand cut off etc. Making you instantly an undesirable. If you are a sex offender you have to take out an add in the local papers and introduce yourself to all your neighbours as a sex offender.
There is no possible way you could serve your sentance and rehabilitate and go on to pick up the pieces of your shattered life.
Now a lot of the checks make sense. Like you probably don't want a peadophile to become a day care center worker. And you probably don't want an imbezzler doing the books for you at work.
But if it means taking an intelligent offender and stripping him of all pursuits in life he/she may find challenging and then expecting them not to turn to a more stimulating life of crime the system starts to fall to pieces.
A thief who stole a piece of bread in the old days after having their forehead tattoed may have found their only option was to become a strangler or brigand in the outside. A judicial system that saves money and makes criminals worse rather than better.
I'm not sure where I stand on it. After reading Shantaram I think the Penalisation faced by most criminals may not be the most productive approach. I'm not even sure what punishment achieves. In the ideal world conditioning would be such that felons most likely would request a punishment as part of their rehabilitation process. But mindless imprisonment? I'm not sure what it achieves.
Whatever.