We might be talking about 5 gifted people for every 1000 people with criminal history. But US might be optimizing for 20 gifted people outside of that group, even if it means losing 5.
Except we are looking for the extreme outliers. Bill Gates was arrested, Steve Jobs and Wozniak made blue boxes and they went on to be the 'model' Americans. Feynman is famous for breaking a host of security rules. So, you may be rejecting 50% of the top 1% of 1% of 1% in favor of those less talented.
we will never know what the real numbers are. Same argument goes other way: Elon Musk was never arrested, Einstein when he came to USA didn't have any convictions (AFAIK). What this says is there is no shortage of people with smarts.