Ismail Ali had last been seen on May 29, 2020, leaving a shop on Cumberland Road

Armed with old files, new technology and tireless detective work, a small West Midlands team has solved more than 240 cold cases. They tell Harriette Boucher why they refuse to give up on the missing

Two funeral directors are on trial, charged with fraud and preventing lawful burial of a body

David Carrick has been jailed for life over the ‘horrific’ abuse

Convicted serial offender given a 37th life sentence for crimes against 12-year-old girl in 1980s and former partner

The former police officer and convicted sex offender David Carrick has been handed a 37th life sentence at the Old Bailey with a minimum of 30 years for molesting a 12-year-old girl and raping a former partner.

Carrick, 50, who served as an armed officer in the Metropolitan police, sexually assaulted the 12-year-old child when he was a teenager in the late 1980s, his trial heard. More than 20 years later, he repeatedly raped a woman and subjected her to “degrading and humiliating” abuse during the course of a toxic relationship.

Exclusive: Courts minister says change needed to stop criminals opting for juries to delay cases, sometimes by years, and clear huge backlog

• UK politics live – latest updates

Criminals will be stopped from “gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing, the courts minister has said, promising to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election.

Drug dealers and career criminals were “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial, Sarah Sackman said, while warning that inaction would be a road to “chaos and ruin”.

At a youth detention centre in north-east England, the paedophile Neville Husband raped and assaulted countless boys. Why was his reign of terror allowed to go on – and why hasn’t there been a public inquiry?

When I met Kevin Young in 2012 he was in his early 50s, handsome, charismatic, smart – and utterly broken. The moment he started talking about Medomsley detention centre he was in tears.

Young was born in Newcastle, in 1959. At two, he was taken into care, and his parents were convicted of wilful neglect. At eight, at a school in Devon, he was sexually abused by the gardener. At 14, at St Camillus, a Catholic residential school in Yorkshire, he was sexually assaulted by the headteacher, James Bernard Littlewood. But none of this compared with his experience at Medomsley, a youth detention centre in north-east England.

• Jets’ Boyd in critical but stable condition

• Glenn: player ‘upbeat’, expected to recover

• NYPD releases images of shooting suspect

New York Jets coach Aaron Glenn says he has spoken to Kris Boyd and is confident the cornerback and special teams standout will be OK after being shot in midtown Manhattan early Sunday morning.

Glenn said the hospitalized Boyd was “upbeat” in their recent conversation.