The first novel “The Humiliated and the Insulted” became Dostoyevsky’s response to crisis of Russian legal system, a metaphorical appeal to change of a paradigm of punishment. The title of the novel emphasizes the composition of the article “humiliation of a human dignity, an insult of honor” and is the first element of a legal discourse. In the new novel about the Petersburg life, Dostoyevsky builds the whole system of the crimes based on passion and/or deceived trust, on material calculation, on abuse of authority. The center of criminology in the novel is the chief criminal - prince Valkovsky remaining unpunished, as he embodies the ontologic evil necessary for the Creator to test human essence. The novel exposes the state court as the means of achievement of justice, and offers in exchange to it three types of remedial actions: duel, refusal of “practical application of the law” and home court. Punishment of characters in the absence of disciplinary institutes is carried out not according to the law and impersonal norm, but according to the internal moral imperative. The writer is guided by lex talionis - the requital law - the archaic judicial principle of the absolute theory of punishment.