Violent Criminal Apprehension Program

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Federal Bureau of Investigation

Abbreviation

FBI

Seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

agency information

Motto

Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity

Agency Overview

Formed

1908

Employees

30,762 (October 31, 2006)

Annual Budget

8.7 billion USD (2006)

Legal personality

Governmental agency

Jurisdictional Structure

Federal agency
(Operations jurisdiction)

United States

Legal jurisdiction

As per operations jurisdiction.

Governing body

United States Congress

Constituting instrument

United States Code Title 28 Part II Chapter 33

General nature

Civilian agency
Federal law enforcement

Operational Structure

Headquarters

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.

Sworn members

12,659 (October 31, 2006)

Unsworn members

18,009 (October 31, 2006)

Agency executives

Child agencies

FBI Academy
FBI Laboratory
Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG)
Counterterrorism Division (CTD)

Major units

Field offices

56: List of FBI Field Offices

Notables
People	John Edgar Hoover, Director, for being the founding director William Mark Felt, former Federal Agent, for whistle blowing, Watergate scandal Joseph Leo Gormley, Forensic Scientist, for expert testimony
Programmes	FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives FBI Most Wanted Terrorists National Incident Based Reporting System Uniform Crime Reports
Significant Operation	COINTELPRO

Website

http://www.fbi.gov/

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The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) is a unit of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation responsible for the analysis of serial violent and sexual crimes, organizationally situated within the Critical Incident Response Group's (CIRG) National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).

ViCAP was created in 1985 by the FBI out of Quantico, Virginia. Pierce Brooks was appointed as the first director, primarily because as a homicide detective in Los Angeles 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 in an attempt to realise 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:

solved and unsolved homicides, especially those involving a kidnapping or if they are apparently motiveless, sexual or random or suspected to be part of a series
missing persons, where foul play is suspected
unidentified persons, where foul play is suspected
sexual assault cases

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. Vi-CAP has been an invaluable tool in solving many cases, including cases decades old and cases in widely separated states. Vi-CAP is particularly valuable in identifying and tracking serial killers, where separate victims might not otherwise be connected as part of the same pattern.

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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.