Chase Burton studies the role of culture and social context in the formation of theories of lawbreaking, desistance, punishment, and criminalistics. He is particularly interested in cases involving diminished capacity or other instances where social control institutions treat legal responsibility as attenuated in some way, such as juvenile courts or problem-solving courts. Chase completed both his law degree (JD) and his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, in Spring 2016 and Fall 2019, respectively. His doctoral dissertation was a social history of the ways in which literature and popular culture influenced developments in criminal law, criminology, and social control institutions in the United States. 

Chase is currently preparing a book proposal based on his doctoral research and preparing to begin a new research project on the connections between migration, space, and punitiveness comparatively across the United States, the UK, and the Netherlands.