Scholars depict punishment as a moral dialogue between the community and the offender, which addresses both the offender’s crime and character. However, how the penal message evolves vis a vis that crime and character as it passes through the different stages of the criminal process has remained under-theorized. This article, building on communicative theory, explores the interrelation between crime and character along the penal process, from sentencing, through prison, to parole release. We argue that in the penal dialogue the relationship between crime and character evolves in a dynamic way through three phases: separateness (sentencing), fusion (prison), and re-distinction (parole) of crime and character. The proposed analysis develops the communicative meaning of the penal process, provides a normative account of the work of punishment administration authorities, and explores applications of our proposed normative analysis for the administration of the punishment.

学者们将惩罚描述为社区与犯罪者之间的道德对话，既涉及犯罪者的罪行，也涉及犯罪者的品格。然而，随着犯罪过程的不同阶段，刑事信息如何相对于犯罪和性格演变仍然没有得到充分的理论化。本文以交往理论为基础，探讨了从量刑、入狱到假释的刑事过程中犯罪与品格之间的相互关系。我们认为，在刑事对话中，犯罪与品格的关系以动态的方式演变，经历了三个阶段：犯罪与品格的分离（量刑）、融合（监狱）和重新区分（假释）。所提出的分析发展了刑事过程的交际意义，为惩罚管理当局的工作提供了规范性说明，并探索了我们提出的规范分析在惩罚管理中的应用。