The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) is a unit of the

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Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

responsible for the analysis of serial violent and sexual crimes, based in the Critical Incident Response Group's (CIRG) National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). ViCAP was created in 1985 by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

and based in

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. Pierce Brooks was appointed as the first director, primarily because as a homicide detective in

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he had been the first to propose the idea. Brooks was inspired by the Harvey Glatman case he had worked on, in which he realized serial homicides could be linked by their signature aspects. Brooks would later obtain a $35,000 government grant to realize his idea. In 1982 he met with Robert Ressler to discuss the idea and was convinced by Ressler that ViCAP should be located at Quantico, as opposed to Lakewood where Brooks originally planned to have it housed. It is designed to track and correlate information on violent crime, especially murder. The FBI provides the software for the database, which is widely used by state and local law enforcement agencies to compile information on: *

sexual assault Sexual assault is an act of sexual abuse in which one intentionally Physical intimacy, sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or Coercion, coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their w ...

cases * solved and unsolved

homicide Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a Volition (psychology), volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from Accident, accidenta ...

s, especially those involving a

kidnapping Kidnapping or abduction is the unlawful abduction and confinement of a person against their will, and is a crime in many jurisdictions. Kidnapping may be accomplished by use of force or fear, or a victim may be enticed into confinement by frau ...

or if they are apparently motiveless, sexual or random, or suspected to be part of a series *

missing person A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as Life, alive or Death, dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accide ...

s, where foul play is suspected * unidentified persons, where foul play is suspected Cases fitting these categories can be entered into the system by law enforcement officials and compared to other cases in an attempt to correlate and match possible connections. ViCAP has been a tool in solving many cases, including cases decades old and cases in widely separated states. ViCAP is particularly valuable in identifying and tracking serial killers, where separate victims might not otherwise be connected as part of the same pattern. The aforementioned pattern that links serial homicides is what is commonly referred to as "signature". ViCAP operates under the knowledge that serial homicides are almost always sexually- and control-driven with a consistent evolving signature present in each murder. In the summer of 2008, the ViCAP program made its database available to all law enforcement agencies through a secure internet link. This allows for real time access to the database and allows agencies to enter and update cases directly into the database.

References

External links

VICAP Official Website

Highway Serial Killing Initiative
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime Government agencies established in 1985 1985 establishments in the United States {{crime-stub