[i'm sorry to lu bixing who has to talk to someone with no empathy]

The idea isn't wholly new. In my universe, sinners are turned into preta, so that they can be made to suffer physically for the duration of their sentence before reverting back to soul state.

However, that means they can technically be "killed" again, which amounts to returning them to soul form.

[...]

Though we don't seem to be preta, so the exact concept doesn't apply here.