​A series of articles explores conditions of variations in rates of punishment across national contexts and through time. The particular focus and addition to past literature is the concern with institutional conditions, i.e., the varying institutional contexts in which knowledge about crime and punishment is generated and diffused and in which decision on punishment are made:
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 1994. "Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 4, pp. 911-943. [REPRINTED in The Sociology of Punishment, edited by Dario Melossi.  Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company. (The International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Penology), pp.  239-272, 1998. REPRINTED in Politics, Crime Control, and Culture, edited by Stuart A. Scheingold.  Dartmouth Publishing Company. (The International Library of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Penology) (1997).   GERMAN TRANSLATION in Forschungsthema Kriminalität, edited by Christian Pfeiffer and Peter Wetzels.  Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 151-183, 1996.
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 1999. “Knowledge, Domination, and Criminal Punishment Revisited: Incorporating State Socialism.”  Punishment and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 45-70.
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2000. “Cultures of Punishment: USA-Germany” (German). Pp. 189-209 in: J. Gerhards ed. Die Vermessung kultureller Unterschiede: USA und Deutschland im Vergleich.  Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2002. “Cultures of Control in Contemporary Societies” (review essay of David Garland’s The Culture of Control).  Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 685-710.
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2004. “Religion, Historical Contingencies, and Criminal Punishment: The German Case and Beyond.”  Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 373-401.
 
  • Joachim J. Savelsberg. 2008. “Punitiveness in Cross-national Comparison: Toward a Historically and Institutionally Founded Multi-Factorial Approach.” Pp. 13-31 in International Perspectives on Punitivity, edited by Helmut Kury and Theodore N. Ferdinand. Bochum: Brockmeyer.