James Densley
• Professor of criminal justice and author of The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic
James Densley is Professor and Department Chair of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University and co-founder and co-president of The Violence Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center best known for its mass shooter database. Densley has received global media attention for his work on street gangs, criminal networks, violence, and policing. He is the author of seven books, including the acclaimed, The Violence Project: How to Stop A Mass Shooting Epidemic, 50 peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals, and over 80 book chapters, essays, and other works in outlets such as CNN, The Guardian, HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. He is also the co-author of On Gangs (2022), a diverse and comprehensive survey of the available theories for understanding this social issue as well as the broad range of responses to it, and Contesting County Lines: Case Studies in Drug Crime and Deviant Entrepreneurship (2023).
Densley has been an invited or plenary speaker on four continents. He is a former middle school special education teacher and in 2017 he was awarded the Points of Light Award for outstanding community volunteerism by the British Prime Minister. Densley earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Oxford.
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Speech topics
The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic
Using data from groundbreaking research on mass shooters, Dr. Jillian Peterson and Dr. James Densley will charts new pathways to holistic violence prevention that addresses the root causes of violence. The audience will hear first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves and will leave the session with tangible skills and data-driven solutions including crisis intervention, de-escalation, suicide prevention, crisis response teams, and trauma-informed institutions.
Available as a tailored keynote presentation, half-day or full-day training.
Books
The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic
An examination of the phenomenon of mass shootings in America and an urgent call to implement evidence-based strategies to stop these tragedies
Contesting County Lines: Case Studies in Drug Crime and Deviant Entrepreneurship
Combining a compulsive read with rigorous academic analysis, this book tells the real-life stories of drug dealers involved in county lines networks, including their methods, motives and misfortunes.
On Gangs
On Gangs provides a diverse and comprehensive survey of the available theories for understanding this social issue as well as the broad range of responses to it.