James Alan Fox

James Alan Fox is an American criminologist who has served as a professor of criminology, law and public policy and as a dean at Northeastern University in Boston, earning his bachelor's degree in sociology, master's degrees in criminology and statistics, and a doctorate in sociology, all from the University of Pennsylvania. Fox has built his career around the empirical study of mass murder and homicide trends in the United States, maintaining long-running databases tracking mass killings and analyzing how their frequency, methods and settings, including school shootings and workplace violence, have changed over time. With fellow criminologist Jack Levin he co-authored Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, a widely used text that distinguishes the two forms of multiple homicide by their underlying patterns and offender characteristics, and Fox has frequently served as a public commentator translating homicide statistics for journalists and policymakers.