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The purpose of this paper is to suggest two things: first, that the scientific and technological developments and increased regulation that have shaped homicide investigations in England and Wales over the last few decades have provided today’s investigators with opportunities not available to their predecessors, and play a key role in solving unsolved homicides. Second, however, the authors suggest that such developments have created new challenges for investigators, challenges that impede current investigations, potentially creating the future unsolved cases.

This paper draws on two qualitative studies that comprised over eight months of ethnographic research, observations, interviews with serving and retired homicide detectives and case file analysis.

The widespread changes to homicide investigations in England and Wales have been valuable in many respects, notably, they have allowed detectives to look back in time and bring longstanding unsolved cases to a close. However, change, although well intentioned, might actually be creating future cold cases as detectives endeavour to manage the volume of information now generated during investigations, fast evolving scientific and technological techniques and an increase in bureaucracy.

This study is helpful for: improving investigative practice; learning from change; reducing unsolved homicides vs a rise in new cold cases; and innovative and entrepreneurial investigators.

Utilising qualitative research, this paper contributes to the academic literature exploring homicide investigation in England and Wales, offering insight into the challenges facing detectives and the potential impact of these upon solving past and present homicide cases.

A bi-level programming approach has been used to tackle an area traffic control optimisation problem subject to user equilibrium traffic flows. In the upper level problem, the signal timing plan for coordinated fixed time control has been defined. In the lower level problem, user equilibrium traffic assignment obeying Wardrop's first principle has been formulated as a variational inequality problem. Mathematical expressions for various components of the performance index in the upper level problem and the average delay in the lower level problem have been derived and reported (Chiou 1997a). A mixed search procedure has been proposed as the solution method to the bi-level problem and a range of numerical tests have been carried out (Chiou 1997b, 1998a,b). In this paper, further numerical tests are performed on Allsop and Charlesworth's (1977) road network in which various traffic loads are taken into account. Effectiveness in terms of the robustness and reliability of the mixed search procedure in congested and uncongested road networks is thus investigated further. Comparisons of the performance index resulting from the mixed search procedure and that of mutually consistent TRANSYT-optimal signal settings and traffic flows are made for the congested road network.

This chapter provides an extensive review of literature on the interaction between and interdependence of informal and formal working practices in various workplace settings. The aim of the chapter is to elucidate the organisational, managerial, human relations and social factors that give rise to informal work practices and strategies, on the shop-floor not only at workers and work group levels but also at supervisory and managerial levels. This chapter helps the reader to understand the informal work practice of making a plan (planisa) in a deep-level mining workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of practitioner views on the 28-day homicide review process.

The research draws upon primary data from interviews with senior investigating officers (SIOs) engaged in homicide investigations and review officers tasked with reviewing homicides unsolved after 28 days.

The review process was perceived to be meeting the needs of the organization but adding little, or no direct value to SIOs. Despite this, there was agreement as to the potential value and necessity of the homicide review process. Issues such as the purpose and process of reviews were considered, with recommendations providing impetus for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to review the use of reviewers commensurate with their expertise, the training and development of reviewers, and the aims, format and timing of a review.

The study involved the MPS, and its relevance to review processes elsewhere, whilst likely, is unproven. Further research could identify whether similar issues arise elsewhere, although the findings of this study could encourage other forces to undertake internal reviews of their own systems and processes to understand whether improvements could be made. Whilst over a third of the SIOs and Murder Investigation Team managers took part in the study, a fifth of the review officers were interviewed.

MPS should amend the objectives of a MCR to reflect the role they play in the prevention of miscarriages of justice. The MPS should conduct a skills analysis of existing staff. Reviewers should be appointed to cases within their sphere of expertise, and should all be qualified at Professionalising the Investigative Process (PIP) Level 3. The MPS should consider an arbitration process for contested review recommendations. The College of Policing should consider a PIP development programme for proactive SIOs. The College of Policing should review and support SIO continuing professional development opportunities within the MPS.

The findings are relevant to any police service currently undertaking 28-day reviews of unsolved homicide investigations.

Much current academic writing focuses on the changing nature of work in the services sector, particularly with regard to the implementation of new technological processes. Bringing attention back to a traditional industry, coal mining, the paper aims to consider the impact of technology upon the labour process and identity of coal miners.

The paper is based on qualitative research undertaken by an ex‐coal miner and draws upon interviews with workers in five of the UK's remaining deep coal mines.

The paper demonstrates how the introduction of new technology in the mining industry has intensified workplace monitoring and surveillance. Despite this, we identify how complete management control over the labour process has not been possible. As the paper will show, miners draw upon their identity as autonomous workers in order to mediate the impact of technology on their working practices. The underlying belief of miners is that the capabilities of new technological working practices do not extend to replacing them at the coal face and that their unique identity as coal miners, combined with the unusual nature of the job, provides them with a force for mediating management control.

The paper offers a unique insight into the impact of technology upon the identity and labour process of a group of workers from a traditional heavy industry.

This paper outlines a steady state multi-modal equilibrium transportation model which contains elastic demands and deterministic route-choices. The model may readily be extended to include some stochastic route-choice or mode choice. Capacity constraints and queueing delays are permitted; and signal green-times and prices are explicitly included. The paper shows that, under natural linearity and monotonicity conditions, for fixed control parameters the set of equilibria is the intersection of convex sets. Using this result the paper outlines a method of designing appropriate values for these control parameters; taking account of travellers' choices by supposing that the network is in equilibrium. The method may be applied to non-linear monotone problems by linearising about a current point. An outline justification of the method is given; a rigorous proof of convergence is as yet missing. Thus the method must now be regarded as a heuristic.