James Alan Fox
Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy
James Alan Fox has published 18 books, dozens of journal and magazine articles, and hundreds of freelance columns in newspapers around the country, primarily in the areas of mass murder, serial murder youth crime, school and campus violence, workplace violence, and capital punishment. As a member of its Board of Contributors, his column appears regularly in USA TODAY. In addition, he was the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
Fox is one of the principals in maintaining the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database. He has led or worked on criminal investigations surrounding serial and mass murder cases, served as an expert witness in over a dozen of civil cases related to multiple homicide, and was a visiting fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Fox often gives keynote talks on campuses and to professional or community groups, as well as testimony before Congress. He has presented to various leaders here and abroad, including President Clinton, Attorneys General Reno and Holder, and Princess Anne of Great Britain.
Fox was honored in 2007 by the Massachusetts Committee against the Death Penalty with the Hugo Adam Bedau Award for excellence in capital punishment scholarship and by Northeastern University with the 2008 Klein Lectureship. Finally, he is ranked #8 in the list of most influential people in criminal justice over the past 50 years by academicinfluence.com.
- The Lipman Family Chair in Criminology, Law and Public Policy, Northeastern University, 1999 – present
- Cole Professorship, Wheaton College, Norton, MA, 1999-2000
- John T. Holden Memorial Fund ecture, University of New Hampshire, 2007
- Hugo Adam Bedau Award for excellence in death penalty scholarship, Massachusetts Citizens against the Death Penalty, 2007
- Klein Memorial Lectureship, Northeastern University, 2008
- Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Central Florida, 2014
- James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, and Emma E. Fridel, Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, 5th Ed., Sage Publications, 2022.
- James Alan Fox and Jack Levin, Mass murder in America: Trends, characteristics, explanations, and policy response. Homicide Studies, October 2021.
- James Alan Fox, Nathan Sanders, Emma E. Fridel, Grant Duwe, and Michael Rocque, The contagion of mass shootings: The interdependence of large-scale mass shootings and mass media coverage. Statistics and Public Policy, July 2021.
- Grant Duwe, Nathan Sanders, Michael Rocque, and James Alan Fox, Forecasting the severity of mass public shootings. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, March 2021.
- Daniel J. Flannery, James Alan Fox, Lacey Wallace, Edward Mulvey, and William Modzeleski, Guns, school shooters and school safety: What we know and directions for change. School Psychology Review, February 2021.
- James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel. Love and violent death. The Gender Policy Report, September 2020.
- Michael Siegel, Max Goder-Reiser, Grant Duwe, Michael Rocque, James Alan Fox, and Emma E. Fridel. The association between state gun laws and the incidence and severity of mass public shootings in the United States, 1976-2018. Law and Human Behavior, November 2020.
- James Alan Fox, Madison Gerdes, Grant Duwe, and Michael Rocque. The newsworthiness of mass public shootings: What factors impact the extent of coverage? Homicide Studies, November 2020.
- James Alan Fox, Jack Levin and Kenna Quinet, The Will to Kill: Making Sense of Senseless Murder, 5th Ed., Sage Publications, 2019.
- James Alan Fox, Randomized Response and Related Methods for Surveying Sensitive Data, 2nd Ed., Sage University Paper series in Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. Sage Publications, 2016.James Alan Fox and Harvey Burstein, Violence and Security on Campus: From Pre-School through College. Praeger Publishing, 2010.
- Jack Levin, James Alan Fox and David R. Forde, Elementary Statistics for Social Research, 12th Ed., Pearson, 2014.
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Education
PhD, 1976, Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
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Contact
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Address
412 Churchill Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115 -
Associations
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Offers a foundation in different statistical techniques that may be utilized to answer research questions in the social sciences. Examines a range of computational social science techniques across data platforms to address crime and criminal justice system problems. Emphasizes existing databases that may inform questions about crime and criminal justice. Also introduces students to different ways to display or visualize quantitative data. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to produce and consume quantitative information.
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Statistical Analysis
INSH 6500
Studies the use of social science quantitative techniques, emphasizing applications of value to public-sector analysts and scholars alike. Introduces probability and statistical analysis. Topics include measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability and probability distributions, sampling distributions and hypothesis testing, bivariate correlation, regression, and forecasting. Examines how to generate and interpret statistical analyses.
