Viclas

Canada

ViCLAS was developed in the mid-1980s by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), due to a series of serial murders. A need was evident for identifying and tracing crimes/criminals, with emphasis on violent crimes such as homicides and sexual assaults. Two of the best automated case linkage [Page 488]systems in the United States were merged, the FBI's ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) and MINN/SCAP (Minnesota State Sex Crime Analysis System). The focus was to develop a system that included both homicides and sex crimes. In 1995, ViCLAS was implemented in Canada.

Sweden

In 1993, criminal investigator Bo Wickström was assigned to a rape investigation that involved the Canadian ViCLAS program. In 1998, Wickström was asked to start a similar project in Sweden to see whether ViCLAS could be useful to Swedish law enforcement. The project was successful, and in July 2000, ViCLAS was permanently established in Sweden. Sweden has approximately 9 million inhabitants and averages 120 homicides and 1,800 rapes annually. In Stockholm, the capitol, a city of about 1 million inhabitants, approximately 200 stranger rape assaults were committed in 1998. An important issue is determining how many, if any, of these rapes were committed by the same offender.

Like many other countries, Sweden has had problems with linking together serious violent crimes such as homicide and sexual assault. The traditional methods of linkage allow investigators to link crimes by examining names, offender or crime scene descriptions, vehicles, modus operandi, weapons, DNA, and fingerprints. All these components are covered by ViCLAS. In addition, ViCLAS emphasizes the sexual, physical, and verbal behavior of the offender. Much of this concerns a new working methodology: to use linkage to determine whether or not the offender has committed crimes previously and/or will commit new crimes. Research suggests that serial criminals have been motivated to commit crimes by their insatiable fantasies. Offenders can certainly change their methods of acting out or where they find their victims, but their fantasies remain influential on how they think. Ron MacKay, the first qualified psychological profiler in Canada, explains that the fantasy ritual will continue over time and space and that the offender who rapes out of anger when he is 25 will still rape out of anger when he is 35.