News cover in the days after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio; was based on a common source for the framework: The AP/USATODAY/Northeast University Mass Murder database. That's because it's the most comprehensive, most up-to-date repository of information about mass killings in the U.S., he says James Alan Foxwho is a criminologist at Northeastern University and one of the nation's leading researchers on mass murder.
James Alan Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University
Research by Fox, the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern, and colleagues is based on the database.
“There's a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to mass murder,” says Fox. “I hope this database will be a standard place where people can get the most authoritative information.”
For now, only journalists and researchers at Associated Press and USA Today have access to the database, but it will soon be available to the public, Fox says.
The database includes every mass killing — which Fox defines as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the killer, are killed within a 24-hour period — from 2006 onward. Fox says it's hard to find comprehensive, reliable information prior to 2006.
Fox has been studying mass murder for decades and most recently partnered with her The Associated Press and USA Todayand both media organizations, for creating this searchable database of mass murders in the US
Fox hopes that the more often the AP/USATODAY/Northeastern database is used to incorporate news coverage of mass killings, the more informed our response to such events will be.
For example, cases in which someone kills at least four family members account for about half of all mass murders since 2006. And 22 percent of all mass murders are committed with a weapon other than a gun, he says.
“These types of cases just don't get as much attention” as mass killings by a gunman, Fox says.
“It's important for the sake of journalism and for the sake of law that the statistics are accurate,” says Fox. “Legislation should be based on valid statistics, not flawed ones.”
For media inquiriescontact Shannon Nargi at s.nargi@northeastern.edu or 617-373-5718.
