THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF CRIME PREVENTION

The problem of criminality prevention is being updated. The relevance of issues related to crime prevention as the main factor of criminality prevention in general is substantiated. The essence of criminality prevention is in implementation of the law's educational function. Its mission is not in punishment, but in fostering anti-criminal cogitative-behavioral “in-stincts” of a personality. Criminality prevention should be based on certain universally rec-ognized international and national principles aimed at decriminalizing the identity of poten-tial criminals. Crime theory is a whole system of modern scientific knowledge, forms and methods (historical, socio-political, psychological, medical, legal, economic, etc.). The urgency of the research is caused by the fact that in the conditions of the Russian re-ality criminality is the most serious form of a social disease, in the “treatment” of which there are no universal and final remedies. There are only means to stabilize it, to minimize, to reduce it, etc. It is really utopian to remain on its complete eradication by state-legal means. However, the latter is very relevant for society, the state, the citizen. The problem of criminality prevention is notable for its complex and multifaceted character. Therefore, the state has applied and is now applying all available civilized means of its social and legal control. Effective criminality prevention requires improved law en-forcement activities, namely, focusing on identifying, researching, analyzing the main as-pects of criminality prevention, as well as on characterization and evaluation of the crim-inality prevention system in modern conditions, taking into account domestic and foreign experience. Various methods for prevention of crimes and offenses are analyzed. Criminality preven-tion must be understood as a specific direction in the state activity to affect the causal set of illegal behavior and conditions conducive to it, which results in the reduction, stabilization, quantitative reduction and qualitative mitigation of crime.