76 European Journal of Criminology 18(1) irregular entry and stay in the country are in themselves offences that can be treated as either administrative or criminal in nature, leading, respectively, to immigration detention awaiting deportation or to incarceration in a conventional prison and the acquiring of a criminal record, after which immigration detention and deportation can also follow (as is similarly the case with completion of a sentence for any of a wide range of other offences) (see, further, Antonopoulou and Pitsela, 2014). By the first half of the 2000s, for instance, as the number of foreign convicted prisoners was well on its way to exceeding the corresponding number of Greek nationals, roughly one in three foreigners was serving a sentence for irregular entry or stay in the country (Cheliotis, 2013). Although this proportion has since fallen, irregular migrants have become more likely to be channelled directly to the growing migrant detention estate instead (Cheliotis, 2013, 2017). At the same time, the variations that continue to distinguish these otherwise similar forms of incarceration from one another – in terms, for instance, of the agencies involved in their enforcement or the international forces to which their use may be exposed – present us with an opportunity for a more nuanced, cross-sectoral comparative consideration of the relative significance of government political orientation and economic downturn in carceral matters in Greece. Contemporary Greece readily lends itself as a case study through which to advance understanding of how policies and practices of incarceration relate to the political orientation of incumbent parties and the experience and fiscal ramifications of national economic downturn. To begin with, by the mid-2010s, rates of conventional imprisonment had undergone a long-term rise in the country, at the same time that conditions inside Greek prisons had deteriorated dramatically. The use of administrative detention for irregular migrants was also increasing sharply, and the situation inside detention centres amounted to a humanitarian disaster. Against this background, the electoral victory of Syriza and the formation of a coalition government under its leadership in January 2015 not only signalled an end to the dominance of the two centrist political parties – PASOK, on the centre-left, and New Democracy, on the centre-right – that had ruled Greece since the restoration of democracy in the country in 1974 (see, further, Featherstone and Papadimitriou, 2015; Pappas, 1999), but also opened up the possibility of a drastic change of course specifically in terms of levels and patterns of imprisonment and immigration detention. This was because Syriza was known for its exceptional sensitivity to all matters carceral and its resolution to promote large-scale progressive reforms of penal and cognate state procedures, alongside its broader commitment to radically transforming Greek politics and society as a whole. The juncture at which the Syriza-led government assumed duties, however, was also a tipping point for the Greek economy: the country was in the midst of an incomparably extended period of deep economic recession, the implementation of the second bailout package the previous government had agreed with the so-called ‘Troika’ (that is, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) had stalled, and the prospect of bankruptcy and exit from the Eurozone was looming over the horizon. In effect, our analysis cuts across three different periods: the 35 or so years following the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship, when long-term economic stability coincided with broad continuity in the political orientation of government, as PASOK and New