successful way the official temperament of the security forces’. The above helps to refute the argument of the authorities that the use of illegal force inside detention can be attributed to individual police officers. Violence against (detained) immigrants is not an aberration but the culmination of a firmly established work culture that has been allowed to persist. The rest of the chapter refers to the impunity granted to Greek police by a number of different institutions. Resilient detention: International human rights organisations’ monitoring Like many secure establishments, there seems to be something insular about immigration detention centres, an air of defensiveness about what goes on inside them. But if the truth about the daily reality inside detention centres is carefully concealed every time, can monitoring groups peel through the fresh white paint? And if what they are able to ‘see’ reflects only part of the problems, how can we make sense of the sharp end of Greek immigration control? Despite their enforced elusiveness,89 information about detention centres in Greece, is not in short supply. International and national human rights organisations have monitored and reported on detention conditions. In the absence of academic research on immigration detention in the country, they have been the key source of knowledge about these sites through their periodic visits and reports (Amnesty International, 2010a; 2012a; CPT 19942020; Greek Ombudsman 2007; 2008; 2010; 2011; 2013 Human Rights Watch, 2008; Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2014; Pro Asyl, 2007; 2012). The severity of the issues uncovered by these monitoring missions cover cannot be brushed aside. In fact, these reports have provided useful evidence for litigation in Greek courts, as attested by lawyers I interviewed in 2018, but also in the European Human Rights Court (ECtHR), which refers to these reports in their judgements. As a lawyer with years of experience in the refugee sector, who has also contributed to key reports about border detention locations, has told me ‘Sometimes I think our work is futile. Then our reports are used by the European Human Rights Court and I think that we’ve created something worthwhile, that could possibly save lives’ (Interview, Athens, 2019). Human rights organisations and monitoring bodies have complained about obstacles, such as constrained access to facilities, data and actual detainees or even officers in hearing range (Amnesty International, 2010a; Bhui et al., 2019) 89 134