Throughout all the visits we shadowed, their conversations with detainees were never private. Instead, they usually occurred in the hearing of the police who stayed in close proximity. It was not possible under these circumstances to obtain a reliable sense of how the detainees were treated, and most conversations lacked depth or structure. At a monitoring visit to the Petrou Ralli pre-removal centre, when the NPM walked into a cell, they were quickly swamped with detainees who wanted to talk to them about their cases. The corridor was squashed, and the wing felt extremely overcrowded. The NPM did not see any of the cells and spoke only to detainees who shouted loudest. The NPM took the names of detainees without any particular explanation of what they were going to look at. At the end of 15 chaotic minutes, the NPM gave the names of the detainees to the director of the centre. He put the crumbled piece of paper in his pocket and said that they would talk to them to explore what issues these people may have. There was no clarity as to what would happen in these discussions and the NPM did not ask to be informed about the outcome of these investigations, nor kept a copy of the names. More importantly, due to funding restraints, the NPM has no interpreters accompanying them. Apart from funding obstacles, this is also a conscious choice taken in the higher management level. The NPM claim that interpreters need to be trained and that there are issues of confidentiality so they could not allow them to overhear any of the conversations they are having with those in detention. Furthermore, according to them, trained interpreters provided by NGOs could not be trusted. While they seem to attempt to overcome communication barriers, by handing out leaflets about the Ombudsman’s office and the complaints process in English, they do not take note of specific issues or cases raised on the monitoring visit. Giving detainees written information about the Ombudsman’s remit and work was potentially useful, but this practice was in danger of becoming a bureaucratic procedure that provided merely the illusion of purposeful monitoring. A leaflet is only of value if it informs and assists. Most of the immigration detainees could not read it and there was little evidence that anyone had actually made contact with the NPM as a result of receiving a leaflet. For example, during the visit to the pre-removal detention centre in Kos, they had mistakenly brought only leaflets in Arabic. Most of the detainees held there at the time were English and French speaking. 146