I am very much in favor of dramatic reform of prisons - I live in the Netherlands, where the government actually does this.

But I stopped reading the comic when it was clear that the protagonist wasn't deliberately going to refuse to even discuss the very first question that even a child would come up with.

Here, let me give you an example. "I think we should stop eating. Now people ask me, "Won't you starve to death?" I don't answer those questions anymore."

It's intellectually bankrupt, and announcing it in advance doesn't make it OK.

Anyone over the age of five knows that there are actually evil people in the world. Some of them do terrible, terrible things and will continue to do those terrible things unless stopped by force.

To pretend that this isn't a problem undercuts your argument before it starts.

I sometimes wonder whether articles like this aren't written by people trying to discredit the prison reform movement. Certainly, if this were the only material I had seen on this issue, it would lead me to conclude that it was a useless idea.