Reaction to Subjective Experience of Punishment

Michael Simons, criminal law scholar at St. John's University School of Law, had this to say regarding some of the questions raised in Rob's post about the subjective experience of punishment:

"The main problem with considering subjective experiences of punishment (an idea to which I'm theoretically amenable) is that it tends to disadvantage the already disadvantaged.  In other words, offenders whose lives already involve significant suffering (the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the hungry) will need to be punished more to experience some predetermined level of suffering, while offenders whose lives involve substantial pleasure (the rich, the employed, the happily married) will need to be punished less to experience an equivalent level of suffering.  Aside from the obvious injustice of a preferential option for the rich, differing punishments run counter to other instincts about retributive desert (e.g., that the rich offender is more culpable than the poor offender)."