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In this paper, I further develop the diagnosis of a revival of character in contemporary criminal law. First, I offer a more differentiated conceptual framework for identifying and analysing the waxing and waning influence of character in criminal law. In doing so I set out, deliberately, from a broad definition of character as a pattern or practice of responsibility-attribution which is premised in whole or in part on an evaluation or estimation of the quality of the defendant’s (manifested or assumed) disposition as distinct from his or her conduct. Second, drawing on this broad model of character, I aim to demonstrate in greater detail the variety of ways in which contemporary criminal law is marked by a resurgence of character, paying particular attention to the ways in which this resurgence both resembles and differs from the reliance on character typical of pre-modern or 18th Century criminal justice, and realises itself with particular force within certain areas of criminalization. The broad model of character serves to illuminate family relationships between a range of ostensibly varied phenomena. In particular, by including within my purview the notions of not only bad character as constitutive of guilt but also bad character as probative of guilt, I am able to explore the ways in which, in the practical context of criminal justice, the recognition of the latter may shade into a practice closer to the former. In other words, I argue that criminal conviction, understood within prevailing conventions of communication, is coming more frequently to imply a judgment of criminal character. The upshot of this analysis is that the doctrinal arrangements of substantive criminal law, though not without importance, are in themselves rather rarely determinative of whether a character- or a capacity- approach to criminal responsibility prevails. Hence, third, I sketch an extra-doctrinal explanation of why we have seen a resurgence of interest in and reliance on ideas of character responsibility: one which finds the roots of the ideology of responsibility which shapes the criminal law in broad practices of criminalization, themselves influenced by a broader political, economic and social context. Finally, I draw some conclusions from this analysis for methodology in criminal law theory, and in particular for the appropriateness of a framework which locates its interpretation of criminal responsibility primarily within a conceptual analysis of legal doctrine in isolation from an analysis of the context of the criminal process, the rules of criminal procedure, the substantive scope of criminal law, and patterns of criminalization and punishment more generally.