No abstract

Traditional methods for deriving performance models of customer flow in real-life systems are manual, timeconsuming and prone to human error. This paper proposes an automated four-stage data processing pipeline which takes as input raw high-precision location tracking data and which outputs a queueing network model of customer flow. The pipeline estimates both the structure of the network and the underlying interarrival and service time distributions of its component service centres. We evaluate our method's effectiveness and accuracy in four experimental case studies.

This article examines two contrasting approaches to the governance of police investigations for ensuring that cybercrime-policing is lawful and ethical. The Netherlands has a national police force working under the direction of an equally centralised prosecution service according to specific laws on the use of special powers of surveillance, with evidence tested judicially when added incrementally to the case file. Theoretically, the process of adapting to the novel features of cybercrime policing should be much easier than within the much more fragmented policing structure in England and Wales, where unreliable evidence is challengeable only at the trial stage and the laws governing police action are equally fragmented. The Dutch police, however, have not found it easy to adapt concepts of covert policing developed in the 1990’s to their on-line investigative activities, despite the existence of comparatively detailed guidance and case law for undercover policing in the ‘real’ world. In the UK, the police seem unsure which requirements and concepts actually apply to their different on-line-investigations. More generally, it is concluded that legal comparisons of the kind undertaken in this article can identify general bottlenecks and barriers to adapting to the cyber environment, but such analysis cannot identify best practices that are readily transferable from one country to another. Legal transplants are a potentially hazardous undertaking because any practices and policies that work successfully will do so because they are necessarily compliant with the underlying systemic legal-cultural factors that make each legal system unique. Indeed, we make no attempt to identify best practices, other than to remark that the centralised nature of Dutch policing seems to afford some advantage, although, for historical and legal-cultural reasons, centralisation is unlikely to be an option for the UK police forces

Criminal records, enhanced criminal records certificates and disclosure of spent convictions: impact of ECHR, Article 8: R (on the application of T) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester [2014] UKSC 35

Whilst the criminal law typically favours the principle of correspondence between actus reus and mens rea, the current law governing offences against the person takes an approach which may be more accurately defined as ‘moderate’ constructivism. This approach is based on consideration of both the defendant’s mens rea and the degree of harm caused by the defendant’s actions. The recent Law Commission Scoping Consultation Paper Reform of Offences against the Person appears to prefer reform based on a move towards the principle of correspondence. This article discusses the theoretical rationale for both the adoption of the correspondence principle and the retention of a moderate constructivist approach in the context of offences against the person. Consideration is given to the fairness of attributing liability to a defendant for the unforeseen consequences of her actions and whether such an approach can be justified by the change in D’s normative position based on her decision to use violence. Consideration is also given to the concept of fair labelling and to potential lacunae that may be created as a result of a move towards a set of offences based on the correspondence principle.