Charles Eliot Silberman (January 31, 1925 – February 5, 2011)[1] was an American journalist and author.
Silberman was born in Des Moines, Iowa. After war service in the Pacific, he gained a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University in 1946 and undertook graduate study their. Subsequently he taught at Columbia and City College of New York before joining Fortune magazine in 1953 where he remained until the early 1970s.[1]
He was the author of Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice (1978), a study of crime and the American criminal justice system.[2]
Silberman used econometric methods to measure the effectiveness in terms of criminal deterrence of two factors: the degree of punishment; and the probability of apprehension. A simple "expected loss" model would predict that deterrent effect would depend only on the result of multiplying the penalty by the probability of it occurring. Silberman concluded that contrary to this model, the likelihood of punishment had a greater effect in most situations. Silberman also stated, "Crime does more than expose the weakness in social relationships; it undermines the social order itself, by destroying the assumptions on which it is based."
He was also the author of Crisis in Black and White, Crisis in the Classroom - The Remaking of American Education, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today.[3]
Charles E. Silberman died on February 5, 2011 in Sarasota, Florida, aged 86. He was survived by his four sons and six grandchildren.