Well, here's what the law in Germany would tell you: You don't get to ask the applicant sitting opposite to you whether or not they have a criminal history unless the vacant position requires a moral integrity exceeding the ordinary. If you run a kindergarten or a jewellery store, you get to demand a clean slate. If you run a construction company and all you seek to hire is a bricklayer, you don't.
Personally, I don't mind too much. The German corrections system has a reoffending rate of about 40%. Shockingly enough, that's a actually a comparatively good quota I'm told, but it also means six out of ten ex-convicts are just living their lives unobtrusively out there, behaving indistinguishably from the general population.
If these people have paid their due to society, they have a right to become members of society once more.
What worries me is attempts to create public indices of dangerous repeat offenders and pedophiles have repeatedly been struck down.
But it's tough to argue against the cornerstone of all constitutionalist theories: the mere risk of abuse of a basic right doesn't entitle the state to restrict the protection offered by said right.
It's a principle I cannot wholeheartedly argue against only on the grounds that my risk assessment differs from somebody else's.
I'm its beneficiary, too. For example, my only legal protection as a gun owner in this country is the aforementioned right to the development of one's personality (also known as the right to pursue happiness), which protects activities such as hunting or competitive shooting.
A couple of years ago though, the victims of a school shooting campaigned to strike down that protection. Germany's highest court ruled against them, maintaining society needs to live with the possibility that basic rights could be misappropriated.
Notwithstanding there's room for improvement in detail, I'm afraid they're quite right.
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