James Alan Fox

Northeastern University | NEU · School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest among criminologists over the past decade. Lacking an existing and reliable data resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result, there is conf...

Previous studies have yielded widely divergent conclusions about the percentage of all mass public shootings globally that take place in the US, ranging from a low of 3% to a high of 36%. Because of documented underreporting of lower-severity attacks involving fewer than 10 victim fatalities in US cases in these studies, it is reasonable to assume...

As defined back in the 1980s, the term “mass shooting” has long been understood to mean the intentional killing of four or more victims with gunfire in a single incident. However, recent efforts to examine this rare and tragic crime have employed alternate definitional criteria. In order to facilitate cross-study comparisons and curb rampant public...

Scholarship on mass public shootings has increased in recent years as comprehensive datasets have become more available. As a result, much is known about the contextual and offender related characteristics of such attacks. However, less research has been conducted on attacks that were planned but ultimately did not occur. Understanding how mass pub...

Objectives Mass shootings seemingly lie outside the grasp of explanation and prediction, because they are statistical outliers—in terms of their frequency and severity—within the broader context of crime and violence. Innovative scholarship has developed procedures to estimate the future likelihood of rare catastrophic events such as earthquakes th...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-021-09511-y

Mass public shootings in the United States have increased in number and severity in recent years, and there has been a corresponding rise in media reporting of such incidents. Does media coverage of these events lead to a short‐term increase in the probability of additional shootings? James Alan Fox, Nathan E. Sanders, Emma E. Fridel, Grant Duwe an...

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest among criminologists over the past decade. However, lacking a reliable data resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result, there is confusion...

Mass murder, especially involving a firearm, has been a subject of increasing interest among criminologists over the past decade. Lacking an existing and reliable data resource for studying these crimes, several organizations have launched their own database initiatives with, unfortunately, little consensus on definition. As a result, there is conf...

With regard to the media reporting of crime statistics, the adage “no news is good news” is far more fitting in its reverse and converse forms: “Good news is no news” and “Bad news is big news.” When crime statistics paint a bleak picture, with crime levels rising, major headlines are made of it. The volatility of city homicide statistics is magnif...

Mass public shootings have generated significant levels of fear in recent years, with many observers criticizing the media for fostering a moral panic, if not an actual rise in the frequency of such attacks. Scholarly research suggests that the media can potentially impact the prevalence of mass shootings in two respects: 1) some individuals may be...

We summarize current data and understanding about the prevalence of gun violence at schools and risk of rampage school shootings. Following that comes a discussion of gun availability among youth and strategies and practices in the United States and abroad that have been implemented to limit access to firearms for minors. Next, we review the curren...

This study examined the characteristics of mass public shootings from 2000 through 2019 that impacted the extent of news coverage. A negative binomial regression predicting AP story counts indicated substantially greater coverage of shootings with a high number of casualties; that target government facilities, schools, or houses of worship; that ar...

Objective: In this study, we analyzed the relationship between state firearm laws and the incidence and severity (i.e., number of victims) of mass public shootings in the United States during the period 1976-2018. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that states requiring permits to purchase firearms would have a lower incidence of mass public shootings...

After declining for over two decades, homicides in the United States rose sharply in 2015 and 2016. We dissect the homicide rise by characteristics of the victims, offenders, and incidents and devote special attention to the similarities and differences in homicide growth by race. The results indicate that the upturn was demographically and geograp...

In the research literature on homicide, gender has typically received far less attention than other demographic characteristics, specifically the age and race of victims and offenders. To some extent this is understandable given that the overwhelming majority, almost three-quarters, of homicides in the United States involve a male killing another m...

In Too Few Victims: Finding the Optimal Minimum Victim Threshold for Defining Serial Murder, we empirically examined how victim count influences the definition of serial homicide. With a series of multinomial logistic regressions, we determined that a cutoff of three victims was optimal to ensure a more homogeneous population, and recommended a ret...

In this chapter, the authors offer an overview of the nature, patterns, and trends in school shootings that have occurred over the past quarter century. Despite the relative safety of schools, certain high‐profile incidents have created a level of fear resulting in a variety of knee‐jerk responses that are of questionable value. The authors describ...

Objective: Despite substantial interest in the topic, there remains no consensus on the definition of serial killing, particularly in terms of the minimum victim count. Whereas most scholars had settled on either a three-victim or four-victim minimum, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) decided a decade ago to lower the threshold down to just...

In the research literature on homicide, gender has generally received less attention than other demographic characteristics, specifically the age and race of victims and offenders. To some extent, this is understandable because the overwhelming majority, almost three-quarters, of homicides in the United States involve a male killing another male. T...

In this chapter, we focus on individuals who murder large numbers of victims (multiple homicide), be it one-by-one (serial murder) or in the course of a single rampage (mass murder). We treat serial and mass murder as two separate and distinct types of multiple murder, but also emphasize their important areas of commonality. We first discuss the so...

The literature of abnormal psychology features a plethora of case studies analyzing the backgrounds and mindsets of individuals who slaughter family members, massacre coworkers, or kill indiscriminately. The moral panic and sense of urgency surrounding mass murder, and mass shootings in particular, have been fueled by various claims that they are r...

Despite their exceptional rarity, high-profile mass murders, particularly those involving firearms, are often linked to deficiencies in our mental health system and gun laws. In this article, we consider the tenuous connections between severe mental illness, gun control measures, and mass shootings. Several suggested preventative strategies are eva...

Despite the exceptionally low rate of homicide on college and university campuses, a few high-profile murder sprees have altered the once care-free sense of safety for many students along with their worried parents. In this article, we examine the common characteristics of multiple-victim campus homicides, particularly shootings, analyzing the righ...

Analysis of varying definitions and resulting conclusions about trends in mass murder

Familicide refers to the killing of multiple family members, most commonly the homicide of an intimate partner and at least one child. This study examines the prevalence of familicide in the United States. Second, it explores the relationship between the prevalence of familicide and the prevalence of financial problems in the United States by makin...

Mass shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, a Colorado movie theater, and other venues have prompted a fair number of proposals for change. Advocates for tighter gun restrictions, for expanding mental health services, for upgrading security in public places, and, even, for controlling violent entertainment have made certain assumptions about...

The gun smoke had barely cleared from the lecture hall at Northern Illinois University where last week a former graduate student had executed five students before killing himself when local and national scribes began speculating about a new trend in mass murder American-style. The "Chicago Tribune" Web site, quick with coverage of the tragedy some...

Executive Summary: It is estimated that there are approximately 13 million children and adolescents in the United States who are obese. Because obesity is a major risk factor for many serious health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, strokes, heart disease, certain cancers and high blood pressure, there are serious concerns that intervention is...

This comprehensive, evidence-based examination looks at violence and security across the entire spectrum of education, from preschool through college. In Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College two expert authors take an evidence-based look at this important issue, dispelling myths and misconceptions about the problem and of...

Notwithstanding the historical significance of the Columbine shooting, recent attention has shifted to college campuses following high-profile massacres at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. In this article, the authors compile and discuss the recommendations most often put forth by task force reports published in the wake of these epi...

The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), assembled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have for many years represented the most valuable source of information on the patterns and trends in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Despite their widespread use by researchers and policy makers alike, these data are not completely without thei...

Sadistic serial killers have been widely diagnosed as sociopaths who are lacking in empathy and inordinately concerned with impression management. We propose instead that many of the behavioral characteristics thought to be distinctive of these serial murderers are actually shared widely with millions of people who never kill anyone. By focusing so...

In the early morning of March 25, 2006, 28-year-old Kyle Huff shot eight young men and women, six of them fatally, at a rave after-party on East Republican Street in the Capitol Hill section of Seattle. The gunman, a transplant from Montana, then committed suicide just as the police arrived on the scene. Because of the perpetrator's suicide, there...

The release of the fbi's 1998 uniform crime reports (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1999) was met with a mix of celebration and skepticism. Lawmakers and public officials were quick to credit a variety of local, state, and federal crime-control initiatives (from community policing to “three-strikes” sentencing laws) for the seventh straight annua...

Although the so-called “dark figure” crime measurement problem has never been a major concern for homicide researchers, the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) as well as other local data series on murder still are plagued by other kinds of missing data issues. Most prominent is missingness in data pertaining to offender characteristics as well as...

Violence research has identified demographic subgroups—distinguished by age, race and gender—having widely varying rates of offending. According to the demographic hypothesis used in criminology, as these segments grow or contract in proportionate size, the aggregate offending rate tends to rise or fall as a result. In this article, we use data fro...

Mass murder involves the slaughter of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event, lasting but a few minutes or as long as several hours. More than just arbitrary, using this minimum body count—as opposed to a two- or three-victim threshold suggested by others (e.g., Ressler et al., 1988, Holmes and Holmes, 2001)—helps to...

For several years, the United States has been enjoying a strong downward trend in the rate of homicide. As shown in Fig. 1, homicide rates of the mid-1990s dropped to levels not seen in this country since the late 1960s, before the double-digit inflation in killings grabbed the attention of the press and politicians alike. Before celebrating this s...

The execution-style murder of 14 family members by a rejected and controlling middle-aged man in rural Arkansas, the vengeful slayings of six coworkers by a disgruntled postal worker in a Royal Oak, Michigan, post office, and the indiscriminate slaughter of 23 customers at a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, by a gunman apparently gone berserk ar...

Marvin E. Wolfgang, a giant in the field of violence research, died in Philadelphia on April 12, 1998. His pioneering work in the study of homicide continues to be a model for investigators. In the following pages, four scholars who were influenced by Wolfgang contribute brief remembrances of his effect on their work and on their lives. They exempl...

Over the past decade the topic of multiple homicide-serial and mass murder-has attracted increased attention in the field of criminology. Though far from the epidemic suggested in media reports, it is alarming nonetheless that a small number of offenders account for so much human destruction and widespread fear. The serial killer is typically a whi...

New data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation make it clear that the peak hours for violent juvenile crime are 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Nearly half of all juvenile crime takes place between 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and nearly two-thirds of all violent juvenile crime takes place between 2:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. In addition, in 57% of famili...

Homicides committed against supervisors and coworkers by disgruntled employees have grown at a disturbing rate in the American workplace. Increasingly, embittered employees and ex-employees are seeking revenge through violence and murder for alleged mistreatment on the job. This article examines patterns and trends in available data and presents a...

During the Christmas season of 1978, residents of West Summerdale Avenue in Des Plaines, Illinois, watched in horror as body after body was removed from the crawl space beneath the Gacy home at number 8213. In the days to follow, as news crews focused their cameras on John Wayne Gacy’s burial ground, neighbors were repeatedly interviewed about what...

Most mass killers target people they know—family members, friends, or coworkers—in order to settle a score, to get even with the particular individuals whom they hold accountable for their problems. Others seek revenge against a certain class or category of people who are suspected of receiving an unfair advantage. But a few revenge-motivated mass...

During the early morning hours of March 26, 1990, New York’s Happy Land Social Club was swinging, packed from wall to wall with Spanish-speaking immigrants who, after escaping political or economic repression, had settled in the Bronx. It was three o’clock, but drinking, music, merriment, and laughter filled the small club—so much so that no one pa...

In June 1987, 40-year-old Arthur Shawcross was granted his freedom—freedom to kill. He had been convicted in 1972 of murdering two young children in upstate New York. His first victim was 10-year-old Jack Blake, who was kidnapped while on his way to a friend’s house to play. Shawcross confessed to raping and butchering the boy, then devouring his g...

Fighting back the nausea, Mexican police performed their unenviable task of digging for bodies. On April 12, 1989, they had unearthed a mass grave on an isolated ranch some 20 miles west of Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the Texas border. Among the 15 corpses buried in the makeshift grave was the body of Mark Kilroy, a blond-haired, 21-year-old U...

“Hi, I’m Jeff. I like the way you dance.” Jeffrey Dahmer’s icebreaker may not have been a clever come-on, but it was effective enough for his purposes. Dahmer, a 31-year-old chocolate factory worker, spent his spare time trolling gay bars in Milwaukee’s decaying Walker’s Point, seeking out pretty young men he could make his own. Sometimes he offere...

Paul Calden said he would be back, and he was true to his word. On January 27, 1993, 8 months after being fired from his job at Fireman’s Fund Insurance in Tampa, Florida, the 33-year-old former claims manager returned to get even. This time, he would be the one to do the firing.

Randy Kraft was considered by neighbors, friends, and business associates as a decent and intelligent man whose casual lifestyle seemed to fit the California scene. A thirty-something homeowner, computer consultant, and college graduate, Kraft was meticulous in his personal appearance and caring in his demeanor. His short walrus-style mustache and...

Christina Powell’s parents had grown increasingly upset about their inability to reach their 17-year-old daughter at school. At first, they assumed that she was probably out partying. After all, this was August 1990, during orientation week for freshmen at the University of Florida, and she more than likely was out making new friends and buying thi...

It was August 20, 1986, when 44-year-old part-time letter carrier Patrick Henry Sherrill opened fire on his supervisors and coworkers at the Edmond, Oklahoma, post office, killing 14. His rampage signaled not only a new concern in workplaces everywhere, but a problem that the U.S. Postal Service in particular would be forced to confront on many occ...

The gruesome discovery in June 1985 of the vicious crimes of 39-year-old Leonard Lake and 24-year-old Charles Ng left residents of Northern California shaking their heads. For the San Francisco police, it began routinely enough on the afternoon of June 2. They were called by the owner of South City Lumber when he observed Ng stealing a vise from th...

Andrei Chikatilo of Russia, serial killer extraordinaire, was arguably more power hungry and control minded than Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy put together. Between 1978 and 1990, Chikatilo killed, dismembered, and occasionally devoured 21 boys, 14 girls, and 18 women in and around Rostov while he worked as an office clerk and part-time teacher. Th...

Christmas Day, 1987, was wet and cold for rural Pope County, Arkansas. It had rained off and on for most of the week, and the Arkansas River was unusually high. Forty-seven-year-old Ronald Gene Simmons spent the holiday alone, puttering around his run-down four-bedroom mobile home, which was anchored at the top of a hill 7 miles north of the tiny t...

John T. Miller, a 50-year-old “deadbeat dad,” murdered four county workers in Watkins Glen, New York, who were responsible for collecting child support money. Having been arrested several times over a span of 20 years for nonpayment of child support, Miller was on the run from a system that he felt was stacked against men like himself. He felt vict...

On August 18, 1987, 35-year-old Donald Harvey admitted having committed an atrocity beyond the imagination of most normal people. He had killed 24 helpless, desperately ill hospital patients over a period of 4 years. To avoid Ohio’s electric chair, the former nurse’s aid plea-bargained with a Hamilton County prosecutor for a reduced sentence. In ex...

Lodged on the northern face of Mount Royal overlooking the distinguished homes in one of Montreal’s more affluent suburbs, the site of the École Polytechnique is as charming as the sound of its name. The University of Montreal School of Engineering, as it is known to English-speaking Canadians, is also known throughout North America as the site of...

By virtue of the type of data generally used (victim surveys), previous research on the victimization of the elderly is limited in two respects. Not only is the crime of homicide outside the domain of victimization data, but sample surveys uncover too few incidents of victimization of the elderly to permit in-depth analyses. Using the supplementary...

This article focuses on a particular form of white-collar crime–insurance fraud in auto body repair. Through the use of an experimental design, whether repair estimates were related to insurance coverage was investigated for a statewide representative sample of auto body repair shops in Massachusetts. The auto body repair estimates were significant...

It has become a criminological fact of life that a small group of offenders is responsible for a far greater share of offending than its size would suggest. For example, it is well known that in the 1945 Philadelphia birth cohort, 6% of the cohort members committed 52% of the offenses. We argue, however, that the conventional percentaging approach...

Crime and security are major issues on a number of college campuses in the United States, yet little criminology research has been aimed at the campus setting. This article explores whixh aspects of the campus profile seem to contribute, or at least relate, to high levels of campus crime. A regression of crime rates on dimensions of the campus prof...

The view of many in the social science research community, it appears, underestimates the scope and potential of the randomized response technique, particularly with regard to its analytic capabilities. That is, there seems to be some concern that this data collection strategy is, by its nature, analytically restrictive. However, the quantitative,...

Randomized response is a survey technique for reducing response bias arising from respondent concern over revealing sensitive information. There has been some question whether bias reduction earned through the randomized response approach is sufficient to compensate for its inefficiency. By comparing self-reported arrests for two interview conditio...

A considerable amount of attention has been afforded the randomized response approach over the past decade in an attempt to refine this method of reducing evasive answer bias in surveys of sensitive information. In this article we review these developments in an introductory fashion and address various concerns in designing a randomized response in...

The authors used regression equations to determine the predictive power of the abbreviated MacAndrew Scale of the MMPI-168 on self-reported delinquent behavior of 1,672 suburban high school students. The abbreviated MacAndrew Scale score successfully predicted alcohol abuse, but was also shown to be related to crimes against property and persons an...