Legal awareness as a factor in preventing illegal (deviant) behavior

This article examines the problem of deviant behavior of individuals in society through their consciousness, namely through one of its types - legal consciousness. The purpose of the research is to establish the relationship between a person's deviant behavior and the appropriate level of his legal awareness. A significant number of methods were used in the study. One of these methods was: the method of analysis, which helped to examine the views existing in science on the main parts of the problem and to draw a conclusion about their mutual influence; the method of deduction helped to determine the ways of solving the problem of deviant behavior proposed in the article by establishing a connection between the components of the problem. With the help of these approaches, the essence of consciousness, the concept of legal consciousness, as a separate type, was determined. The ontology and types of deviant behavior were analyzed, one of which is illegal behavior. The connection between legal consciousness and illegal behavior was determined. Ways to eliminate illegal behavior through changing the legal consciousness of individuals were proposed. The result of the study was the identification of ways to overcome deviant behavior through increasing the level of legal awareness.