Well since that is one viable alternative, anyone dumb enough to go ahead and commit a felony, knowing they will be marked by it for life, is probably too dumb to hold a job for any length of time anyway.
You do have to have some kind of deterrent, like the idea that committing felonies can ruin you for life, in order to potentially make people think twice before committing them. The fact that such a deterrent doesn't stop everyone isn't down to failure of the deterrent, it's down to the lack of intelligence of the people who fail to take it into consideration.