Investigating the Reliability of the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) Crime Report

The Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) is a computerized investigative aid, developed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is used to increase information sharing and enable crime linkages in serious crime investigations. The current study examines the reliability of the ViCLAS Crime Report by calculating the level of agreement among two samples of police officers who received one of two fictitious crime scenarios; homicide (n = 116) or sexual assault (n = 121). Results from this study show that the observed inter-rater reliability among police officers completing the ViCLAS booklet was 79.30% for the homicide scenario, and 87.70% for the sexual assault scenario. Implications of the results are discussed.