Category: Gangs and Organized Crime

Bouchard, M., & Morselli, C. (2014). Opportunistic structures of organized crime. In L. Paoli (Ed.), The oxford handbook of organized crime. (pp. 288-302). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

| Categories: Gangs and Organized Crime, Selected - Gangs and Organized Crime

Organized crime researchers have often referred to the mass of small and ephemeral groups that form in any given criminal market as opportunistic operators and less organized (or disorganized) forms of criminal operations. Indeed, such groups have been excluded, at times, from the organized crime category. In this essay, we demonstrate that such opportunistic structures…

Gravel, J., Bouchard, M., Descormiers, K., Wong, J., Morselli, C. (2013). Keeping promises: Logic models, and the design of a new classification of gang control strategies. Journal of Criminal Justice, 41, 228-242.

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| Categories: Academic papers, Gangs and Organized Crime, Selected - Gangs and Organized Crime

We argue that inadequate frameworks to compare similar gang control strategies, and the scarcity of well-designed evaluations have hindered our ability to determine the effectiveness of existing programs. This article proposes a new typology of gang control strategies to use with logic models as tools to improve gang program evaluation. Link to full text on…

Wong, J. S., Gravel, J., & Bouchard, M. (2011). Effectiveness of street gang control strategies: A systematic review and meta-analysis of evaluation studies (023). Public Safety Canada.

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| Categories: Gangs and Organized Crime

This systematic literature review and meta-analysis of evaluation studies on street gang control strategies focused on articles and reports from multiple bibliographic databases. The database search resulted in a total of 2,060 hits. Of the 297 studies that were examined, only 38 were retained for the systematic review after all screening procedures and inclusion criteria…

Spindler, A., Bouchard, M. (2011). Structure or behaviour? Revisiting gang typologies. International Criminal Justice Review, 21, 263-282.

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| Categories: Academic papers, Gangs and Organized Crime

Typically, the development of gang typologies have used either behaviorally based or structurally based characteristics to develop a classification system of gangs. The current study aims to assess the results of typologies approached from both angles, drawing from the same data source. It also examines whether using a combination of both approaches would prove to…

Bouchard, M., Nguyen, H. (2011). Professional or amateurs? Revisiting the notion of professional crime in the context of cannabis cultivation. Ch. 7 In T. Decorte, G. Potter, and M. Bouchard (Eds). World Wide Weed: Global Trends in Cannabis Cultivation and its Control. London: Ashgate.

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| Categories: Gangs and Organized Crime

A theoretical review of the way in which we categorize criminals based on experience and success. Ashgate Amazon

Bouchard, M., Spindler, A. (2010). Gangs, groups, and delinquency: Does organization matter? Journal of Criminal Justice, 38, 921-933.

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| Categories: Academic papers, Gangs and Organized Crime, Selected - Gangs and Organized Crime

A consistent finding of research on delinquency has been that gang members show higher levels of delinquent behavior than non-gang members. However, research attempting to understand the mechanisms underlying this finding is lacking. The basic premise of the current article is that the level of organization found in delinquent groups and gangs matters in clarifying…

Tremblay, P., Bouchard, M., Petit, S. (2009). The size and influence of a criminal organization: A criminal achievement perspective. Global Crime, 10: 24-40.

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| Categories: Academic papers, Gangs and Organized Crime

It is difficult to measure the size, influence and growth patterns of criminal organizations embedded in illegal markets. In this paper, we argue that measuring the influence of a criminal organization by its size (in number of employees, or ‘members’) may under- or overestimate its sphere of influence in illegal markets. Self-report survey and size…