Juvenile crime and A Clockwork Orange

Juvenile Justice (should one say revenge and retribution?) reminded me of, possibly the most disturbing film I have ever seen - Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. I had seen it when it came out.  The ideas it had raised remain fresh in my mind.

Recently, when my son saw it at retrospective, I decided to read Anthony Bugess's original book, especially 21st, the last, chapter left out of the American edition and not a part of the film.

Kubrick called Chapter 21 "an extra chapter" and claimed^[7] that he had not read the original version until he had virtually finished the screenplay, and that he had never given serious consideration to using it. In Kubrick's opinion, the final chapter was unconvincing and inconsistent with the book.

However, the final chapter makes it even harder to think of retribution as a part of juvenile justice. It makes the whole juvenile period seem like a biological imperative through which many human males pass and outgrow. All this makes the plight of dealing with victims even harder.