Peter Reuter is Professor in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. He was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2019 and in 2020 became a Distinguished University Professor.  He served as editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from 1999-2004. He founded and directed RAND's Drug Policy Research Center from 1989-1993.

His early research focused on the organization of illegal markets and resulted in the publication of Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand (MIT Press, 1983), which won the Leslie Wilkins award as most outstanding book of the year in criminology and criminal justice. In 2001 he co-authored (with Robert MacCoun) Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Places, Times, and Vices (Cambridge University Press). In 2004 he co-authored (with Edwin Truman) Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Money Laundering.  Since then he had co-authored three other books, all published by Oxford University Press.  He has also chaired three National Academy of Science panels.  Dr. Reuter received his PhD in Economics from Yale.