Legal nihilism and legal idealism as the most relevant and expressing a greater danger of deformation of legal consciousness of police officers

Introduction: the article is devoted to the study of cognitive deformity in internal affairs officers. Materials and Methods: to substantiate the proposed theses, the author used such special methods of cognition as historical-legal, logical, statistical, formal-legal, etc. The theoretical basis of the study was the work of Russian academicans dealing with the formation of legal consciousness, regulatory legal acts, as well as data from a sociological study. Results: the author considered such types of deformation of legal consciousness as legal nihilism and legal idealism, defined the features of legal idealism and legal nihilism, the reasons for their appearance in minds of police officers, and suggested ways to overcome these negative phenomena. Discussion and Conclusions: the author concluded that the legal education of police officers should hold a special place in the activities of the internal affairs bodies, which, in turn, indicates the need to improve the legal education measures.