Charles Eliot Silberman was an American journalist and author.

Silberman was born in Des Moines, Iowa

Des Moines, Iowa

Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...

. After war service in the Pacific, he gained a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1946 and undertook graduate study their. Subsequently he taught at Columbia and City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 before joining Fortune

Fortune (magazine)

Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...

magazine in 1953 where he remained until the early 1970s.

He was the author of Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice (1978), a study of crime and the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 criminal justice system.

Silberman used econometric methods to measure the effectiveness in terms of criminal deterrence

Deterrence (legal)

Deterrence is the use of punishment as a threat to deter people from committing a crime. Deterrence is often contrasted with retributivism, which holds that punishment is a necessary consequence of a crime and should be calculated based on the gravity of the wrong done.- Categories :Deterrence can...

 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

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

; it undermines the social order

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 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.

Charles E. Silberman died on February 5, 2011 in Sarasota, Florida

Sarasota, Florida

Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...

, aged 86. He was survived by his four sons and six grandchildren.