"It is disturbing to note that it is in the democracies, founded on the premise of the inviolability of free will, that the principles of the manipulation of the mind may come to be generally accepted . . . The eventual democratic response to crime may well be what could be represented as the most human, or humane, or compassionate approach of all: to regard man's mad division, which renders him both gloriously creative and bestially destructive, as a genuine disease, to treat his schizophrenia with drugs or shocks or Skinnerian conditioning. Juvenile delinquents destroy the State's peace; mature delinquents threaten to destroy the human race. The principle is the same for both: burn out the disease."
~ ~ Anthony Burgess

One of the most challenging and difficult social problems we face today is how can the State maintain the necessary degree of control over society without becoming repressive? How can it achieve this in the face of an increasingly impatient electorate who are beginning to regard legal and political solutions as redundant? The terms of ideological arguments have changed; battles over personal responsibility and freedom are the crux of the debate now. The State sees the spectres of crime, violence and transgression emerging and this increases the risk of its over-reaction and a reduction in our autonomy.

The central idea of Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange (1971) concerns the question of free will. Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become as the title suggests A Clockwork Orange?

"It was the sense of this division between well us and sick them that led me to write, in 1960, a short novel called A Clockwork Orange. It is not, in my view, a very good novel . . . But it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the view the view that some people were criminal and others were not. A denial of the universal inheritance of sin is characteristic of Pelagian societies like that of Britain, and it was Britain, about 1960, that respectable people began to murmur about the growth of juvenile delinquency and suggest (that the young criminals) were a somewhat inhuman breed and required inhuman treatment . . . There were irresponsible people who spoke of aversion therapy . . . Society, as ever, was put first. The delinquents were, of course, not quite human beings: they were minors, and had no vote they were very much them as opposed to us, who represented society."
~ ~ Anthony Burgess

Criminality/violence is a concept that Science has never been able to entirely comprehend, as there are no formulas or hard evidence that can be used in its analysis. So, instead of regarding crime as a moral issue, it sees it as a disease, and like all diseases it can be cured with the right treatment. This treatment would essentially involve eliminating a person’s ability to do wrong. However since there is no actual sense of morality, wrong is simply seen as that which is socially undesirable. This poses a severe limitation on the range of actions of the individual, and it may even be suggested that it destroys the ability to choose, to have free will. It is from this notion that Stanley Kubrick questions whether goodness is a matter of action or of choice. Apparently he believes the latter, as the film demonstrates, that without the ability to decide oneself how to act one becomes a "clockwork orange", an organic machine on a predetermined trajectory.

A Clockwork Orange explores the limits of power and freedom and the difficulties of reconciling the conflict between individual freedom and social order. Alex exercises his freedom to be a vicious thug until the State turns him into a harmless zombie, no longer consciously able to choose between good and evil. One of the conclusions of the film is that there are limits to which society should go in maintaining law and order.

A Clockwork Orange is an incendiary mixture of Jacobean revenge drama, 18th-century picaresque novel, sci-fi, porn and horror comic. From the first shot, of the charismatic wraith, Alex (Malcolm McDowell) smirking in close-up at the camera, we are immersed in the disquieting narrative of the leader of a menacing gang of costumed "droogs". They converse in "nadsat" Burgess's quasi-Joycean experimental youth patois, a hybrid of English, Latin and Russian. Dressed in invented fetishistic costumes and make-up that suggest youthful rebellion without confining it to a "real" time (bowler hats, codpieces and braces), they engage in sadistic beatings and sexual assaults - glamorous and beautifully choreographed brutality – stylish because it's so stylized.

The assault on the tramp that begins the film delivers a convulsive shock to the senses: a hypnotically unpleasant moment. After leaving the Korova Milk Bar Alex and his droogs, Pete, Georgie and Dim, swagger into a pedestrian underpass. A tramp lies on the concrete. He sings Molly Malone as the four boys approach. Alex speaks in voice over:

"One thing I could never stand is to see a filthy, dirty old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers, and going blerp, blerp in between, as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was."

As the tramp reaches the end of his song, the boys stand around him applauding wildly. The tramp looks up.

"Can you . . . can you spare some cutter me brothers?"

Alex leans forward, ramming his stick into the tramp's stomach. His firnmeds collapse in laughter. The tramp cries out.

"Go on do me in you bastard cowards I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this."

Alex peers at his prey.

"Oh, and what's so stinking about it?"