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There’s no crime quite like murder.

Though obviously personal, in that an individual has been killed, it also has a uniquely public aspect: One of our own has been taken, and there exists a genuine collective loss. Who was the victim? What might he have become? What might she have done with her life had she been allowed to keep it?

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Murder’s public nature has been recognized for almost as long as there has been law; that principle is embedded, for instance, in the motto of the Ontario coroner’s office, which holds in part that its investigations, and sometimes inquests, ensure that no death of a member of the community “will be overlooked, concealed or ignored.”

But in Alberta this week, they took a significant step to changing all that.

Since mid-January this year, the Edmonton Police Service has been withholding the names of some homicide victims — about a third of the 29 murders in the city so far this year, in fact. The practice is already so ingrained there’s a pro forma little paragraph at the bottom of the news releases where the force has determined the victim won’t be identified: “The EPS has decided not to release the name of the deceased in this investigation for the following reasons: It does not serve an investigative purpose, there is no risk to public safety and the EPS has a duty to protect the privacy rights of the victims and their families.”