Abstract: This article conducts a comparative analysis of the rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances in the countries of Anglo-Saxon legal family, Romano-Germanic legal family, socialist legal family, and religious legal family. Particular attention is given to the research of establishing the rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances in the United States, as well as in countries of the Romano-Germanic legal family, since the criminal laws of the indicated countries provide more specific rules for imposing punishment in cases with mitigating circumstances. The result of this work became the conclusions on the order of establishing rules for imposing punishment in cases with mitigating circumstances in criminal laws of the states belonging to different legal families. The conducted research allowed drawing the following conclusions. Firstly, in the criminal laws of most countries of Anglo-Saxon legal family, there are no rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances. The exception is the United States Federal Penalties Guidelines. Secondly, most countries of the Romano-Germanic legal family adopter the criminal lows that provide fairly specific rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances. At the same time, such rules differ in bases of application, order of imposition of punishment in cases with mitigating circumstances and the mechanism of reduction of punishment. Thirdly, the rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances in criminal laws of the majority countries of the socialist legal family are almost identical to such stipulated in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of 1996. A significant step forward in this regard made only by the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan and the Criminal Code of Moldova. Fourthly, in the vast majority of countries of the religious legal family, there are no rules for imposing punishment in the presence of mitigating circumstances, which is caused by sustained influence of religion upon the criminal legal doctrine.