Second, detention has been legitimised through diverting scrutiny away from official responsibility and liability. Despite a long series of monitoring visits, reports and court judgments all testifying to Greece’s monstruous immigration detention system, the authorities seem indifferent to or even ignorant of this evidence. Their indifference and ignorance, moreover, I argue are closely related to the point above, i.e., the powerful role that the police and the judiciary, in this case, have acquired over the years. By resorting to this power, they have become what Hogg and Brown term as ‘primary definers’ of the truth. As such, they hold a monopoly over what constitutes the facts of detention and everything else is marginalised and discredited as untruth. In this context, allusions to lack of finances, pressure from the government and/or Europe, and infrastructural pathologies have been used as vehicles to discredit unfavourable assessments. This, in turn, diverts attention away from official responsibility; thus, hindering scrutiny and public accountability.99 As long as criticism is ignored, minimised or disbelieved, there is little reason to act upon it. ‘We believe we are ok’, as the manager of Petrou Ralli reassured me. Yet, this would not have been possible, if it were not for the third process, I have analysed in this chapter; namely, the complicity of independent actors that operate as monitors of the situation inside detention. Here, I am not refuting the independence of these actors, but rather I point out their ‘bare bones’ approach to their institutional mandates, resorting to questionable alliances between them and the authorities (Grenfell and Caruana, 2022). This has inadvertently contributed to Greece not meeting its international obligations to protect individuals against human rights abuses on its soil. Therefore, I conclude, while putting people through such atrocities as those described previously in the thesis cannot be solely explained by a simplistic reference to Greek authorities’ malicious intentions or disregard people’s humane standards altogether, I argue that the safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behavior and renounce cruelty have been in this case absent or scarcely found; thus, deliberately allowing for a continuum of institutional racism and harmful practices. Carlton (2007) makes a similar case about the official responses to institutional crisis inside an Australian prison. 99 150