The article examines justice as a principle of law and as criminal principle of justice as a principle of compensated justice. The measure of justice in punishment is mainly the correspondence of the punishment to the public danger of the committed crime, i.e. a certain equality of harm caused by criminals to other persons, society or the state, and the severity of the punishment imposed on them. The author argues that a court that follows the principle of justice in imposing punishments has to establish two types of genetic correspondence. The first type is the correspondence of the criminal behavior, circumstances of the crime and the culprit’s personality to the public danger of the criminal’s personality as a criminological basis for imposing punishment. This correspondence employs the genesis of criminal behavior to substantiate the imposed punishment. The rejection of this correspondence could lead to a misconception about the nature and degree of social danger of the perpetrator’s personality as well as an unreasonable type and amount of punishment for the committed crime. The second type consists in the compliance of the type and amount of punishment with the grounds for its imposition ˗the social need to oppose antisocial behavior and personality traits of the guilty person with such a punishment that meets the interests of law-abiding citizens, society, and the state, that is, a social phenomenon that embodies the genesis of criminal law regulation of public relations. The author claims that that it is necessary to identify not only the above-mentioned types of genetic and other correspondences in the mechanism of imposing a punishment, but also take into account the correspondence in terms of proportionality, especially when it comes to the compliance of the punishment with the gravity of the crime committed. Having analyzed all types of correspondences in the mechanism of punishment imposition, the author concludes that since the indicated types of orrespondences in the system of punishment imposition determine the activity of the court, insofar they act as its regulators. The ability to regulate the activities of the court turns their entire set into an instrument for introducing the principle of justice into punishment. Therefore, the mechanism for imposing punishment manifests itself in the process of regulating criminal law relations as a legal instrument for implementing the principle of justice in punishment.