Peter Reuter

Peter Reuter is a professor in the School of Public Policy and in the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. Reuter was appointed Distinguished University Professor by the president of the University of Maryland in July 2020.

In November 2018, he was declared as one of two awardees for the 2019 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the leading prize in that field.

His early research focused on the organization of illegal markets and resulted in the publication 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. Much of his research has dealt with alternative approaches to controlling drug problems, both in the United States and Western Europe.

In recent years Reuter has also been publishing on money laundering control and on the flows of illicit funds from developing nations. His books include (with Robert MacCoun) Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Places, Times and Vices (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Money Laundering (Institute for International Economcs, 2004; with Ted Truman), The World Heroin Market: Can Supply be Cut? (Oxford University Press, 2009, with Letizia Paoli and Victoria Greenfield).

Reuter founded and directed RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center from 1989-1993. From 2007-2011 Reuter served as the first president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. He also served as editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from 1999 to 2004. He has chaired three panels for the National Academy of Sciences.

Reuter received his PhD in economics from Yale.

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