Violent Criminal Apprehension Program

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 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.