52 Xenakis S., Cheliotis L. institutional capacity constraints, account for Greece’s long-standing non-compliance with the ECHR. Our findings suggest that privileging national institutional capacity as the primary determinant of compliance is wanting in two important ways. On one hand, through a long historical approach to Greece’s non-compliance with the ECHR in the field of incarceration, our study illustrates that problems of institutional capacity do not invariably account for continuing human rights violations. Under the 1967–74 dictatorship, for example, the grand scale of violations was, if anything, illustrative of the strong institutional capacity of the state (and this both in terms of administration and finances), rather than the reverse. Nor, as we have shown, was the junta insufficiently familiar with the expectations of the international human rights regime. On the other hand, taking a close look at the range of institutional obstacles to human rights reforms regarding conditions in prisons and immigration detention centres in contemporary Greece, we propose that consideration of institutional capacity extend to the stance and practices of key institutional actors themselves, such as the judiciary, whilst at the same time acknowledging the role of government in shaping institutional capacity in its various manifestations. The Greek case affirms the thesis that governments engage in cost-benefit analysis when considering compliance with international human rights rules and norms, yet our findings also stress that the costs and benefits under consideration may pertain as much to the international as to the domestic arena. Clearly, significant social and material procompliance pressures with which Greece has had to contend at certain critical junctures have emanated from both inside the country (e.g., rioting by prisoners) and beyond (e.g., criticism and sanctions from the CPT and the ECtHR, respectively), occasionally triggering, whether singly or together, government initiatives to tackle ongoing human rights violations in sites of incarceration. The array of powerful forces that have combined to produce an overall trend towards non-compliance with the ECHR, however, have similarly spanned influences from both the domestic and international spheres. During the 1967–74 dictatorship, the widespread use of incarceration under notoriously brutal conditions was largely targeted against the Greek Left, partly to intimidate and suppress domestic political opposition to the military regime, and partly to crush those deemed enemies of the state. But persecution of leftist constituencies also reflected the politico-economic Cold War priorities of the country’s anti-communist allies in the West, whose support to the junta effectively counterbalanced the costs of non-compliance with the ECHR. Over more recent decades, Greece’s persistent failure to redress abysmal conditions of incarceration has served important politico-economic functions inside the country, from cowing disadvantaged groups into accepting exploitation in the workplace, thereby benefiting business sectors of great electoral importance to political elites, to helping successive governments limit the electoral damage wrought by their regressive socioeconomic policies. At the same time, mounting criticism of the ECtHR within Europe has combined with the concurrent rise of blatant violations of international human rights conventions by various Western states to furnish Greece with ample symbolic cues towards non-compliance with the ECHR in the field of incarceration and beyond. In recent years, the EU has also set the tone for the harsh treatment specifically of migrants in carceral sites across Greece by threatening to sanction the country so as to force it into adopting stricter policies and practices of immigration control that appear