Professor Crofts is an international expert on criminal law, models of culpability and corporate crime. Her research is cross-disciplinary, drawing upon a range of historical, philosophical, empirical and literary materials to enrich her analysis of the law. Her research is in the area of socio-legal studies coalescing around issues of justice in criminal law in practice and theory makes a distinctive contribution to critical evaluations of criminal legal models of culpability and enforcement. Her analysis of criminal legal models of wickedness has contributed to a jurisprudence of blameworthiness. Professor Crofts is a leader in the jurisprudential field of law and horror cultural legalities analysis, most recently drawing on the horror genre to think through categories of criminal law and to construct arguments as to culpability.

Professor Crofts' socio-legal scholarship reflects her on-going commitment to the analysis of the impacts of criminal law and the development of pragmatic strategies for reform framed by sophisticated theoretical analysis. Her research is a call to responsibility - to the legal system, law-makers, legal academics, and the general community - to be more aware and critical of the models of culpability held out and enforced by criminal law. Professor Crofts has served as an expert witness, consultant and advisor on criminal law, planning law and corporate crime. Professor Crofts' expertise in corporate crime was further recognised in her appointment as an Advisory Board Member of the Australian Law Reform Commission for its review into Australia's Corporate Criminal Responsibility regime. 

As an active member of research communities at both the domestic and international level, she has developed an extensive research network, which includes American, UK and European academic institutions like Exeter University, Lille University, John Hopkins University and the University of Iowa. Penny is part of various research groups including the Monash Transnational Criminal Law Group, Law and Society's collaborative research network 'Economic Crime and Corporate Compliance' and EuroCriminology working group on Organizational Crime. Penny is currently co-editing two international projects - a Research Handbook on Law and Popular Culture (to be published by Edward Elgar) and the Law and Literature volume of the Springer International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication.