Michael S. Barton

Biography

Dr. Michael S. Barton joined the Sociology Department at LSU in 2013 after receiving my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany. Prior to joining the faculty at LSU I was a Research Scientist at the Center for Human Services Research, which is part of the School of Social Welfare at the University at Albany, where I was involved in evaluations of efforts to reform local education and juvenile justice practices. My primary research interests join the criminological and urban sociological literatures to explore the geographic and social contexts in which crime occurs. At present, I have published research on crime in the context of college campuses and high schools in the Journal of Criminal Justiceand Youth & Society respectively. Additionally, I am a co-author on a forthcoming paper in Law & Society Review that explored the association of deportation and violent crime.

Research Interest

Much of my recent scholarly attention focuses on projects that will advance the study of the association of gentrification and crime. A few of these projects include the development of an innovative operationalization of gentrification that uses census data and information collected from news sources, a temporal and spatial analysis of the relationship between gentrification and crime in New York City between 1980 and 2009, and an examination of how cultural changes associated with gentrification may result in elevated rates of neighborhood crime.