Selected publications are shown below, a complete listing can be found here.
Bouchard, M., Soudijn, M., & Reuter, P. (2020). Conflict Management in High-Stakes Illegal Drug Transactions. The British Journal of Criminology, 1-20.
We draw from aspects of Black’s theory of conflict management to (1) provide a description of the types of disputes occurring at the highest levels of the drug trade and (2) examine whether conflicts that end in violence differed from those that found a peaceful resolution. A mixed-methods approach was used to analyse 33 incidents...
Bouchard, M., Morselli, C., Macdonald, M., Gallupe, O., Zhang, S., & Farabee, D. (2019). Estimating Risks of Arrest and Criminal Populations: Regression Adjustments to Capture–Recapture Models. Crime & Delinquency, 65(13), 1767-1797.
The size of criminal populations is unknown, and policy decisions are typically based only on the number of offenses and offenders that come to the attention of the criminal justice system. However, the size of criminal populations may follow different trends than what is observed in official data. We use a regression-adjusted capture–recapture model to...
Malm, A., Bouchard, M., Decorte, T., Vlaemynck, M., & Wouters, M. (2017). More structural holes, more risk? Network structure and risk perception among marijuana growers. Social Networks, 51, 127-134.
This study examines the relationship between network structure and risk perceptions. We use self-report data on 359 illicit marijuana growers and their personal co-worker networks. Our results show that growers with more structural holes in their co-worker network perceive higher risk of apprehension from law enforcement. We argue that this result is facilitated by two...
Ouellet, M., Bouchard, M., & Malm, A. (2016). Social opportunity structures and the escalation of drug market offending. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 53(6), 743-764.
Objectives: This study looks at whether social opportunity structures are associated with transitions into more serious drug market offending. Our focus is on the speed at which transitions occurred, and whether variations in criminal embeddedness play a role in explaining this. Methods: A survey of 520 North American cannabis cultivators allowed us to assess one dimension of...
Nguyen, H., Bouchard, M. (2013). Need, connections, or competence? Criminal achievement among adolescent offenders. Justice Quarterly, 30, 44-83.
Variations in criminal performance have been much less explored than other parameters of criminal careers. We explore the factors associated with differential criminal achievement in a sample of 154 adolescent offenders involved in cannabis cultivation. Drawing from theories of earnings attainment, we examine the role of drug use, criminal social capital and criminal human capital...
Bouchard, M., Beauregard, E., Kalacska, M. (2013). Journey to grow: Linking process to outcome in target site selection for cannabis cultivation. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50, 33-52.
The objective of this study was to test whether there is a relationship between characteristics of the journey to an outdoor cannabis cultivation site and the total number of plants grown. Spatial data on the location of a sample of 132 cultivation sites derived from aerial detection policing efforts is used. TwoStep cluster analysis is...
Gallupe, O., Bouchard, M. (2013). Adolescent parties and substance use: A situational approach to peer influence. Journal of Criminal Justice, 41, 162-171.
This study takes a situational approach to testing criminogenic peer influence effects on substance use by examining audience characteristics at the last two parties that adolescents attended. We examine the applicability of situational approaches to social learning theory and symbolic interactionist perspectives on criminogenic peer group effects.We found that higher levels of substance use are...
Bouchard, M., Ouellet, F. (2011). Is small beautiful? The link between risks and size in illegal drug markets. Global Crime, 12, 70-86.
A well-known finding of research on illegal markets is that drug-dealing organisations operate in risky and uncertain market and intra-organisational conditions that considerably limit their size and their survival time. Yet, little is known about the organisations or individual dealers who are more successful than others at avoiding arrest and incarceration, especially in regard to...
Gallupe, O., Bouchard, M., Caulkins, J. (2011). No change is a good change? Restrictive deterrence in illegal drug markets. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39, 81-89.
This study applies the concept of restrictive deterrence to a sample of drug market offenders. In particular, we assess the influence of behavioral changes post-arrest on time to rearrest. The sample consists of arrest data on all drug offences in South Australia from the start of 2000 to the end of 2007 (n = 26819)....
Bouchard, M., Nguyen, H. (2010). Is it who you know, or how many that counts? Criminal networks and cost avoidance in a sample of young offenders. Justice Quarterly, 27, 130-158.
The aim of the current study is to assess whether criminal networks can help young offenders avoid contacts with the criminal justice system. We examine the association between criminal network and cost avoidance specifically for the crime of cannabis cultivation in a rural region in Quebec, Canada. A self‐report delinquency survey, administered to the region's...
Bouchard, M. (2007). A capture-recapture model to estimate the size of criminal populations and the risks of detection in a marijuana cultivation industry. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 23, 221-241.
Originally developed in biology, capture-recapture methodologies have increasingly been integrated into the study of human populations to provide estimates of the size of “hidden populations.” This paper explores the validity of one capture-recapture model—Zelterman’s (1988) truncated Poisson estimator—used to estimate the size of the marijuana cultivation industry in Quebec, Canada. The capture–recapture analysis draws on...
Bouchard, M. (2007). On the Resilience of Illegal Drug Markets. Global Crime, 8, 325-344.
This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting...