It is this attitude along with treating the justice system as purely a trafficker of punishment instead of taking people out of society to rehabilitate them to interact better
There's a reason the Nordic system has far lower rates of recidivism, because they actually try to rehabilitate people for reintegration in society.
In the US, as you state, it marks people for life. This prevents getting legitimate work and forces people who may have made a mistake once to commit further crimes just to survive.
Add that onto the fact that US prisons are shitholes where there is no structure or activities and people just teach each other about how to get better at commuting crimes
Its the US system and attitude that's dogshit and could be changed. But we have too many people in this country with a boner for retribution and the suffering of the other