On a biological/psychological level, even if you upload the entirety of the brain into the cloud, the copy is still different from the original simply because of the hardware difference and consequent later experiences. First, we have no idea how a brain reacts to the non-organic environment. Second, even placed into an organic environment, if the body isn't an exact clone with the exact amount of hormones floating around in the cerebral spinal fluid, the brain is still going to make different decisions based on differing neurotransmitters feeding the neurons. And third, even assuming the same data with an exact clone of the biological environment, there's still the inability to keep the perspective the same (aka the consequential future stimulus input), so at the very least from the point of cloning, the two consciousness have already moved in different directions.
And that's my long winded way of saying I don't think the copy can be considered a continuation of the original.
Then there's the entire legal perspective of whether the punishment is justifiable even if it is the same person. Not a lawyer, but am pretty sure "culture" and "tradition" aren't justifiable for sentencing. Even in ancient Chinese society, there's pretty tight regulations for how long you can put someone in prison for whatever the offense (ignoring the corruption that allows the sentence to keep getting longer and stuff), if nothing else then for the fact that running a prison is expensive and keeping too many prisoners around is asking for expenditures that the treasury can't afford. Even if you treat prisoners like shit, you still have to pay the guards...
no subject
On a biological/psychological level, even if you upload the entirety of the brain into the cloud, the copy is still different from the original simply because of the hardware difference and consequent later experiences. First, we have no idea how a brain reacts to the non-organic environment. Second, even placed into an organic environment, if the body isn't an exact clone with the exact amount of hormones floating around in the cerebral spinal fluid, the brain is still going to make different decisions based on differing neurotransmitters feeding the neurons. And third, even assuming the same data with an exact clone of the biological environment, there's still the inability to keep the perspective the same (aka the consequential future stimulus input), so at the very least from the point of cloning, the two consciousness have already moved in different directions.
And that's my long winded way of saying I don't think the copy can be considered a continuation of the original.
Then there's the entire legal perspective of whether the punishment is justifiable even if it is the same person. Not a lawyer, but am pretty sure "culture" and "tradition" aren't justifiable for sentencing. Even in ancient Chinese society, there's pretty tight regulations for how long you can put someone in prison for whatever the offense (ignoring the corruption that allows the sentence to keep getting longer and stuff), if nothing else then for the fact that running a prison is expensive and keeping too many prisoners around is asking for expenditures that the treasury can't afford. Even if you treat prisoners like shit, you still have to pay the guards...