ViCAP stands for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It is a unit of the FBI that was created in 1985 and that was designed to analyze and track serial violent and sexual crimes. The unit and its database were first setup in 1985 when the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit realized that serial crimes can be linked and tracked by a perpetrator's MO and signature. ViCAP maintains a database that analyzes, tracks, and correlates data on crimes such as sexual assault, kidnapping, and murder. The database can be accessed by any law enforcement unit in the United States. It is one of law enforcement's most powerful tools when it comes to tracking serial rapists and killers because it allows the tracking of a serial offender's signature across multiple jurisdictions--something that was extremely difficult to do before the creation of ViCAP.