Peter Grabosky holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University, and has written extensively on criminal justice and public policy. His general interests are in computer crime, policing, and regulatory failure. Peter is interested specifically in how non-governmental institutions may be harnessed in furtherance of public policy. Peter is a former Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, He was the 2006 winner of the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology for contributions to comparative and international criminology, and the 2011 recipient of the Prix Hermann Mannheim, awarded by the International Centre of Comparative Criminology at the University of Montreal. In 2012 the (US) National White Collar Crime Center and the White Collar Crime Research Consortium awarded him the Gilbert Geis Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of outstanding professional contributions in the area of white collar crime. He is a past president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, a founding member and former  Vice President of the Asian Criminological Society.

In 1983, Peter moved to the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), where, with the exception of a two-year secondment to The Australian National University, he spent the next 18½ years. At the AIC, Peter served as Director of Research for the National Committee on Violence, whose report, 'Violence: Directions for Australia', provided a cross-sectoral, whole-of-society roadmap for the prevention and control of violence in Australia. Peter's later years at the AIC saw him address the newly-emerging field of computer-related crime. Written in collaboration with Russell Smith, Peter's books on the subject contributed to the development of policy in this field, and have received international recognition.