Depends what the crime is.

I have a relative who spent time in prison because she tried to kill her mother with an insulin injection who got out and got a job as a nurse working at a nursing home. She lied on her job application about felony convictions but only got found out when her mentally retarded sister showed up at the emergency room with an insulin overdose. It said in the paper she was stealing meds from the controlled substance locker and I believe it because she was stealing her grandson’s ADHD meds too.

I believe we should give felons a chance but the above case is one where not doing a background check looks like malpractice.

Many companies handle background checks in exactly this manner; it’s common for seven years to be a cutoff where they stop caring.

Which is excellent, and should make it easy to codify that into law.

Soft on criminals is not usually a vote winner.

Think again. Historically, codifying workers' rights into law requires either a material benefit to powerful employers or decades of brutal sacrifice from working people who risk their lives in mass strikes.

FYI: As I understand, Japan is five years. After which, you can safely answer that you have no criminal record. Also, except for public media, it is basically impossible to run a criminal background check in Japan. There are few exceptions for things like C-suite level jobs and certain gov't jobs.