Since olden times people have been trying to build a state where the law would have been a clear and indisputable norm for everyone. Supremacy of the law is the main characteristic of legal state. It is obvious that this kind of state will never work properly without active participation of the society that is suppose to oversee an activity of all of the branches of the government. In other words civil society can promote the democratization of all institutions of society. Civil society is a product of the development of legal awareness of each individual and from this point it is important to start receiving instruction in legal matters since childhood.

As a rule young generation have always been open for new tends that is the main reason of eternal conflict of «fathers and children». Young people usually want to change the world, make it a better place and since the world begins at home country, creating favourable conditions for personal development is one of the main task of every state. As I said before, special attention needs to be focused on fostering a culture of lawfulness in teenage circles because it is a long-term and complex process that includes many age-related difficulties. First of all it is an individual difference between people that contains psychophysiological specific and level of knowledge. Harmonious development of a highly intellectual person depends on activity of «legal awareness creators». Most young people do not tend to get some information directly from government bodies, law enforcement agencies or officials that are part of legal and law enforcement systems. Also «youth» tend to see schools only as a facilitators between them and knowledge without any moral or emotional component. Moreover, young people tend to see in schools just a working relationship that is a sign of loss of authority of eductioal system. Teenagers prefer to receive information from their relatives, friends, mass-media and the Internet and it gives rise to concerns over the accuracy of the gained information. For example, sometimes mass-media promotes aggressive behaviour and immorality that destroys respectful attitude to law. It can lead to flawed understanding of many important things and cause a deformation of sense of justice.

It must be mentioned that theorists mark out five types of deformation and the most dangerous one is «rebirth of sense of justice» when a person refuses to follow rules, respect other people’s rights and wants to commit unlawful acts.[3] Children and teenagers are most at risk since their value system is still unstable and it means that they can easily be involved in criminal world.

History of each country contains challenging times when public safety is under threat. The Russians associate this state of affairs with the last decade of the twentieth century when everything seemed to move backwards. The number of crimes grew extremely fast, it kept becoming more and more brutal and criminals started being really well-organized. Only with the help of measures taken by the government the country was able to decrease the level of criminalization and overcome the socio-political crisis. Over the last years, there has been a tendency in romanticization of those dark times. Criminal world has been trying to influence teenagers, to make them believe that there is nothing wrong with being an outlaw.

As the result of criminal’s influence we got a new problem known as AUE. AUE is an abbreviation containing Russian slang words and has different meanings «Prisoners and Criminals Unity» or «Prisoners’ Way of Life». [4]  The main contingent of this subculture is underage (from 10 to 17 years old). It is obvious that it is a cult of prison «concepts», amorality and violence. The first mention of AUE appeared in 2013 and in three years this issue was discussed during the meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. Yana Lantratova, the executive secretary of the Council, said that AUE is «a national security problem». [5]

This subculture is more popular in remote regions of the country where economic and social wealth is lower than in central regions or in cities that are located close to penal institutions. In fact, closeness to prison plays a key role in activity of AUE since actions of teenagers are often led by prisoners. Members of AUE try to control schools by forcing other students to pay taxes, those children that do not want or cannot give any money immediately become subjects to many different forms of abuse. Collected money transfers to «obshchak» (mutual support fund of criminals) in prison. Clearly, victims of extortion which do not have enough pocket money are made to steal parent’s money, otherwise they get in trouble. From this point, both sides get involved in illegal activity. «Code» of AUE prohibits any contact with the Police and teenagers have to deal with problems on their own. Attempts by administration of educational institutions and parents to stop the violence are usually unsuccessful. That is distressing because the law enforcement agencies might become victims themselves. As an example, in Chelyabinsk that is a city with a population of a million, on May 27, 2017, during the Holi Festival of Colours the crowd of teens attacked a police car that arrived to ensure the safety at the event. «They doused the official car with paint, kicked the car, and shouted insults at law enforcement officers, forcing them to leave the festival. All this was accompanied by joyful shouts of “AUE!”». [6] Teenagers in group feel stronger and more confident. Most of them sure that they will not be brought to justice by reason of age, it gives a growth to their feeling of permissiveness. Members of such subcultures as AUE usually have a bad relationships within the family, lack of attention, poor organisation of leisure activities, they simply do not have a role model and look for en emotional let-out and self-realization possibilities. [1]

Against all expectations, cult of prison «concepts» began to spread in big cities with the help of mass media and the Internet. There are about 3,000 groups focused on the theme of AUE on social network VKontakte. Some of them have a high quality content and even offer to buy souvenir production, it is becoming clear that behind all this propaganda there are interested people with sufficient financial resources. Here we can see a duality of this criminal subculture : real gangs and groups on the Internet.      D. V. Gromov, Doctor of Historical Sciences (N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology), notes that sometimes processes occurring on the Internet do not match reality and seem to be like «internet-folklore».[2] In my opinion, AUE is more than just a «virtual game» or «internet-folklore» and the author clearly underestimates the important role played by the Internet as the main source of information for teenagers. That is why the government started banning those groups on social networks as one of the actions taken against AUE.

Summing it all up, I want to say that the problem of criminal subcultures can be resolved only by concerted actions of educational institutions, law enforcement agencies, government, etc. Attention should be paid to prevention of wrongful conduct among young people. They need to be taught from early childhood that every action has its consequence.