His editorials in The Times, signed and unsigned, as well as articles elsewhere in the paper and in other publications, addressed policing practices, the courts, sentencing, incarceration and rehabilitation, among other subjects. He argued strongly against the death penalty.
Costa Rica RPCV David C. Anderson, of The Times, Dies at 62
David C. Anderson, of The Times, Dies at 62; Wrote About Crime
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: September 16, 2005
David C. Anderson, a journalist and author who wrote extensively about criminal justice in books and in The New York Times, where he was a member of the editorial board for 12 years, died yesterday at the hospice of Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan. He was 62 and a Manhattan resident.
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The New York Times, 1990
David C. Anderson
The cause was cancer of the biliary tract, said his wife, Elizabeth Burke Gilmore.
His editorials in The Times, signed and unsigned, as well as articles elsewhere in the paper and in other publications, addressed policing practices, the courts, sentencing, incarceration and rehabilitation, among other subjects. He argued strongly against the death penalty. In the mid-1990's, he came out against calls by President Bill Clinton and others for automatic life sentences as a way to reduce crime. Instead, he said, billions of dollars should be spent on community policing, through which officers work more closely with neighborhood groups.
David Charles Anderson was born in Washington, on Oct. 30, 1942, and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. He graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in English in 1964. From 1964 to 1967, he was in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica.
In 1968, he joined The Wall Street Journal in its Chicago bureau, and transferred to the main office in New York in 1970. He was a reporter and editorial writer for The Journal.
He became an editor at The New York Times Magazine in 1973, and in 1977 joined Criminal Justice Publications, which published Police Magazine and Corrections Magazine. He returned to The Times from 1981 to 1993.
Mr. Anderson's first book was "Children of Special Value: Interracial Adoption in America," published in 1971 and based on his own adoptions across racial lines.
Mr. Anderson and his first wife, Martha Bennett Walker, adopted two daughters, Mary Walker Anderson, who lives in Brooklyn, and Sarah Bennett Anderson, of Manhattan, and two sons, Michael Ebert Anderson, of Manhattan, and Thomas David Anderson, of Seattle.
His marriage to Ms. Walker ended in divorce. In addition to his adopted children, he is survived by his wife, Ms. Gilmore, and a daughter, Elspeth Michaela Burke Gilmore, of Oakland, Calif.; a son, William Wallace Burke Gilmore, of Laramie, Wyo.; and three grandchildren.
His 1988 book, "Crimes of Justice" drew on crimes committed against him and his family, and advocated tough punishment for criminals. His next book, "Crime and the Politics of Hysteria" (1995) tried to separate fact from fiction in the case of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who committed a rape in 1986 while on furlough from prison under a Massachusetts program during the administration of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. Vice President George Bush made much of the incident in his winning campaign against Mr. Dukakis for the presidency in 1988.
In 1998, Mr. Anderson published "Sensible Justice," which argued that rehabilitation of prisoners was being ignored. The National Law Journal said the book "explodes a number of myths."
From 1999 until 2003 he was director of communications for the Ford Foundation and publisher of FFR (Ford Foundation Report).
In 2001, Mr. Anderson and his son Thomas wrote "The No-Salt Cookbook: Reduce or Eliminate Salt Without Sacrificing Flavor," a project that grew out of Mr. Anderson's efforts to lower his blood pressure.
