In Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866), Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin is a lawyer in his forties who has made a career and a fortune and is engaged to Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister. In a letter, Raskolnikov’s mother explains Luzhin’s ideas without realizing how revealing they are: he wanted to marry a girl without a dowry who had known poverty, because a wife should owe everything to her husband. Raskolnikov hates him on sight, and at a family meeting Dunya ends up breaking off the engagement. Luzhin decides to take revenge. At the funeral meal for Marmeladov, he accuses Sonya, Marmeladov’s daughter, who works as a prostitute to support her stepmother and her siblings, of stealing a hundred-rouble note from him. The note is found in her pocket. Everyone is ready to believe it, until Lebezyatnikov, Luzhin’s roommate, declares that he saw Luzhin slip it in himself. The plan was meant to discredit Sonya and, through her, Raskolnikov, who had defended her.
// The theoryWho defines the crime
Critical criminology emerged in the 1970s with a question that the rest of the discipline took for granted: who decides what a crime is, and who ends up being treated as a criminal? Richard Quinney argued in 1970 that crime is a definition created by those with the power to write and apply the law, and Steven Box showed in 1983 how the crimes of the powerful are systematically less visible and less punished than those of the poor. In this view, the justice system is not a neutral referee: it reflects inequalities of class, gender and status. One of its most direct mechanisms is credibility. The word of a respectable man and that of a poor woman do not start on equal terms, before any evidence is examined.
The credibility gap
Luzhin’s plan works on a single premise: that his accusation will be believed and Sonya’s denial will not. He is a lawyer, a guest, a gentleman; she is a prostitute, poor and the daughter of a drunk. In the room nobody doubts that the note was stolen. Feminist and critical criminology have studied this gap in many contexts: in sexual assault cases, where the victim’s past is used to question her; in police stops, where some people are suspects by default; in trials, where the defendant’s social class influences how his story is heard. Luzhin does not need strong evidence. He needs an accusation that fits the prejudices of the audience.
// The subjectThe economics of a respectable man
Dostoevsky makes Luzhin the spokesman for a fashionable economic doctrine. He explains to Raskolnikov that if each person seeks his own interest, society as a whole will prosper, and that charity only weakens that mechanism. His idea of marriage follows the same logic: a contract in which the poorer party owes gratitude to the richer one. His crime is coherent with that worldview. He treats Sonya as a disposable instrument in a dispute with Raskolnikov and assumes that her reputation is worth nothing, because in his economy a poor woman’s reputation has no value. He is not a violent man or an outsider. He is a respectable member of society, and that is exactly what makes his accusation dangerous.
Luzhin
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// The crackThe witness who broke the script
The scene also shows the limits of the critical perspective. Luzhin’s plan fails, and not because of the authorities, but because of a witness who speaks up: Lebezyatnikov, a young man full of progressive ideas whom Dostoevsky often mocks, but who in this moment does the right thing. Critical criminology tends to describe the power of the respectable as almost total, and real life is full of cases in which a witness, a document or a camera changes the story. The other limit is that the critical view sometimes reduces individuals to their social position. Luzhin is not only the product of his class: many men of his class would not have framed a poor woman. His meanness is also personal.
Even so, the scene shows what the theory warns about. Before Lebezyatnikov speaks, the whole room has already convicted Sonya. Her stepmother defends her desperately, but the evidence is in her pocket and her reputation does the rest. If nobody had seen Luzhin, a poor young woman would have been convicted of a theft that a gentleman committed against her.
Evidence, not prestige
The lesson of the Luzhin scene is the principle of equality before the law and its everyday difficulty. Research on false accusations and wrongful convictions shows that prejudice about the accused—their class, their origin, their past—weighs on decisions by witnesses, police and judges. That is why criminal procedure demands corroborated evidence and why the protection of witnesses who contradict powerful people matters so much. In the novel, justice depends on a lucky witness. A fair system cannot depend on luck.
Three key ideas
- Critical criminology (Quinney, 1970; Box, 1983) asks who defines crime and who is believed, and shows that the system is not neutral: class, gender and status weigh on who is prosecuted.
- Luzhin, a respectable lawyer, frames Sonya, a poor young woman who sells herself, with a hundred-rouble note at a funeral, counting on the fact that his word is worth more than hers. His plan fails only because Lebezyatnikov saw him.
- The crack: the critical view tends to see the power of the respectable as total and to reduce people to their class; the scene shows that a witness can break the script, and that Luzhin’s meanness is also personal.
Sources · further reading
- Quinney, R. (1970). The Social Reality of Crime. Little, Brown.
- Box, S. (1983). Power, Crime, and Mystification. Tavistock.
- Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Dostoevsky, F. (1866). Crime and Punishment. Published in The Russian Messenger.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Luzhin?
Luzhin (“Piotr Petróvich”) is a villain from Crime and Punishment, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He slipped the banknote into her pocket without her noticing, waited for the right moment and accused her out loud.
Why does Luzhin (Pyotr Petrovich) become a villain?
Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin and critical criminology: Dunya’s fiancé in Crime and Punishment accuses Sonya Marmeladova of theft in front of everyone, at a funeral, counting on the fact that nobody will believe a poor young woman who sells herself against a well-dressed lawyer. Critical criminology asks precisely that question: who is believed and who is prosecuted.
Which criminological theory explains Luzhin?
Luzhin's case is analysed through Critical criminology. Critical criminology studies not only why people offend, but who decides what counts as crime, who is prosecuted and who is believed. Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, the lawyer who in Crime and Punishment (1866) intends to marry Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, is a respectable man who wants a poor wife so that she will owe him everything. When the engagement is broken, he takes revenge by accusing of theft Sonya, the young woman who sells herself to support her family: he slips a hundred-rouble note into her pocket and denounces her in public. His plan fails only because someone saw him. The novel shows how the prestige of an accuser and the stigma of the accused settle guilt before the facts do.
