Cite as: 511 U. S. 825 (1994)
Blackmun, J., concurring
regardless of whether a state actor intended the cruel treatment to chastise or deter. See also Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language 1736 (1923) (defining punishment as "[a]ny pain, suffering, or loss inflicted on or suffered by a person because of a crime or evil-doing") (emphasis added); cf. Wilson, 501 U. S., at 300, citing Duck-worth v. Franzen, 780 F. 2d 645, 652 (CA7 1985) (" 'The infliction of punishment is a deliberate act intended to chastise or deter' "), cert. denied, 479 U. S. 816 (1986).
The Court's unduly narrow definition of punishment blinds it to the reality of prison life. Consider, for example, a situation in which one individual is sentenced to a period of confinement at a relatively safe, well-managed prison, complete with tennis courts and cable television, while another is sentenced to a prison characterized by rampant violence and terror. Under such circumstances, it is natural to say that the latter individual was subjected to a more extreme punishment. It matters little that the sentencing judge did not specify to which prison the individuals would be sent; nor is it relevant that the prison officials did not intend either individual to suffer any attack. The conditions of confinement, whatever the reason for them, resulted in differing punishment for the two convicts.
Wilson's myopic focus on the intentions of prison officials is also mistaken. Where a legislature refuses to fund a prison adequately, the resulting barbaric conditions should not be immune from constitutional scrutiny simply because no prison official acted culpably. Wilson failed to recognize that "state-sanctioned punishment consists not so much of specific acts attributable to individual state officials, but more of a cumulative agglomeration of action (and inaction) on an institutional level." The Supreme Court—Leading Cases, 105 Harv. L. Rev. 177, 243 (1991). The responsibility for subminimal conditions in any prison inevitably is diffuse, and often borne, at least in part, by the legislature. Yet, regardless of what state actor or institution caused the harm
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