I'm highly skeptical of this explanation because most countries are large enough to do that, and historically "accessing public records" was not easy so it doesn't seem all that useful.
In my observation a far more likely explanation is that US culture sees "criminals" as subhuman monsters hardly worthy of consideration. I'm exaggerating a bit here, but I find general US attitudes towards crime and criminals unhealthy – there are many data points for this: felony disenfranchisement, non-violent criminals routinely shackled by the hands and feet in many jurisdictions, "prison rape lol", death penalty, draconian punishments even for simple things, the state of the prisons, death penalty FOR MINORS until 2005, many minors are prosecuted as adults, the number of people in prison, stand your ground laws, a police force with long-standing ... issues, that "kids for cash" not only was a thing but managed to go undetected for many years (many of the sentences were idioticly draconian and even a single one of them should have set off all sorts of red flags), obsession with crime on TV news and such, routine administration of drug testing, etc. etc. etc.
And, of course, the mug shot racket, most of which are taken after arrest and not conviction – sucks to be you in cases of mistaken identity or other harmless arrests where nothing much was going on.
A few of these: okay. All combined: a pattern.