The article questions whether criminal punishment can be consistent with community—-whether it can treat those who are punished as full members of the political community. The article argues that a deterrent system of punishment is not fully consistent with the values of a society in which criminal law has a limited role in defining public wrongs and providing formal responses to such wrongs. A communicative system of penitential punishment, which aims to persuade wrongdoers to repent and to reform, is consistent with those values and can be defended against the liberal charge that it violates offenders’ autonomy and privacy. Notes, references