Page:FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 55 (12).pdf/6

 Police Department Commander Pierce R. Brooks' Violent Criminal Apprehen­sion Program (VICAP) and the Arson In­ formation Management System (AIMS), codeveloped by Dr. David Icove, were identified, and their founders invited to the FBI Academy for consultation. Such a meeting was held with the Criminal Personality Research Project Advisory Board in November 1982, and resulted in the concept of a National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). The main idea of this center was to bring together the fragmented efforts from around the country so that they could be consolidated into one national resource center available to the entire law enforcement community.

In addition to the Attorney General's emphasis on the problem of violent crime, the 98th Congress of the United States had shown interest in specific violent crime issues, such as "missing and murdered children",the "sexual ex­ploitation of children," "unidentified dead bodies," and "serial killers." $8$ For in­ stance, in 1983, Senator Arlen Specter, Chairperson of the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, with the strong support of Senator Paula Hawkins, held hearings as a means of gaining informa­ tion from violent crime "experts" upon which to base new legislative initiatives and funding decisions. The goal was to strengthen the criminal justice system's capabilities to deal more effectively with a breed of human predator that often seemed to travel throughout the coun­ try with relative impunity, coldly murder ing vulnerable women and children for no apparent motive.

Since 1982, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) had been investigating the possibility of awarding a grant to a diver­ sified group of individuals made up of criminal justice professionals, academi­cians, writers, and other interested per­ sons in order to establish a pilot VICAP program. Together with the National In­ stitute of Justice, OJJDP funded a meeting of interested parties which was held in the summer of 1983 at Sam Houston State University's Center for Criminal Justice, located in Huntsville, TX. At the conclusion of the 2-day meeting, and after several presentations on violent crime topics, the participants unanimously agreed that a National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime should be established. Furthermore, they agreed that it should be ad­ ministered by the FBI's Behavioral 4 / FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin