Dr Geoff Page
Lecturer
Profile
Biography
Geoff Page is a lecturer in the University of York’s School for Business and Society. Following an early adulthood of drug and alcohol dependence, serious mental illness and regular arrest, Geoff entered residential rehab and later worked as an addictions counsellor with a criminal justice caseload. He subsequently completed a doctorate on drug misusing arrestees with complex needs.
Geoff came to York to work on the National Evaluation of Pilot Drug Recovery Wings, a three-year study exploring a radical shift in Government policy, intended to get prisoners off drugs. In terms of outcomes, Drug Recovery Wings were not a huge success; and so, with an expert working group chaired by Lord Kamlesh Patel of Bradford, we subsequently worked on a series of costed blueprints setting out what could be done to achieve radical results with drug dependent prisoners, using currently-available policies and programmes.
Geoff has also worked on several other projects, most of them centred on drug (and particularly heroin) use. These include a study of the lives, resources, and ambitions of people prescribed methadone for more than ten years; and an exploration of the policing of cannabis in North Yorkshire. He has most recently been working on a large study exploring the needs of out of treatment crack, heroin and dependent alcohol users.
Qualifications
- Certificate in Counselling Skills (University of Leeds)
- MPhil in Criminological Research (University of Cambridge)
- PhD in Criminology (University of Cambridge)
University roles
Admissions tutor for Social Policy programmes, and Social and Political Sciences
Research
Overview
Geoff’s research focuses on drug policy and related support services, particularly for the most marginalised drug users (e.g., criminal justice, seriously mentally ill, and homeless populations). This includes a strong interest in the impact and delivery of opioid substitute prescribing, and the ways in which treatment services seek to respond to drug users’ needs. A key adjunct to this has been understanding how policy shapes the engagement of different groups – and, specifically, how establishing harm reduction or abstinence as policy goals benefits (or disbenefits) different groups of drug users.
Teaching
Other teaching
Geoff’s research focuses on drug policy and related support services, particularly for the most marginalised drug users (e.g., criminal justice, seriously mentally ill, and homeless populations). This includes a strong interest in the impact and delivery of opioid substitute prescribing, and the ways in which treatment services seek to respond to drug users’ needs. A key adjunct to this has been understanding how policy shapes the engagement of different groups – and, specifically, how establishing harm reduction or abstinence as policy goals benefits (or disbenefits) different groups of drug users.
Geoff currently convenes a final year module, Drugs: Prevalence, Policy and Practice, and is admissions tutor for York’s Social Policy programmes (including Social and Political Sciences).
