741 Cheliotis progress; Herzfeld, 1992). This helps to explain the apparent paradox that the Greek state persists in employing a discourse that is so openly at odds with reality in the eyes of external observers as to risk, indeed invite, their criticism afresh. Acknowledgements For their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article, thanks are due to Lena Karamanidou, Nicky Padfield and Sappho Xenakis. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Information on the ways in which states react to external pressures for reform of their conventional prison systems can be found, amongst others, in Cassesse (1996), Evans and Morgan (1998) and Morgan and Evans (1999). The scope of the Ministry’s operations may thus be reflected more accurately in the Ministry’s name itself, at least insofar as the latter implies that ministerial provision of protection extends only to those already granted citizenship, to the exclusion of non-citizens such as asylum seekers and irregular migrants. As such, the use of imprisonment in Greece has risen dramatically over the last three decades or so (Cheliotis, 2011), and has been exacerbated further since the onset of the financial crisis in 2009 (Aebi and Delgrande, 2012). Due to space restrictions, the focus in this section is specifically on border guard stations and detention centres, although similar conditions are found in all other sites where irregular migrants may be detained in Greece, including very often in conventional prisons (on which see Cheliotis, 2012). Detention conditions in the police station on the coast of Igoumenitsa in north-western Greece are, in fact, known to have been so deplorable that a local court, in an unprecedented and as yet unrepeated decision it reached in October 2012, cited them as reasons justifying the escape of 15 irregular migrants from police detention earlier in that year (see further Cheliotis, in progress). In the general population of Greece, meanwhile, there is an oversupply of medical specialists, dentists and pharmacists (indeed, an oversupply that is impressive by European standards) (Davaki and Mossialos, 2006). Omitted here for reasons of space is a specific analysis of the different ways in which the Greek state has reacted to domestic and international criticisms, respectively (see further Cheliotis, in progress). Dendias’ statements were largely similar to those of his immediate predecessors, reflecting a high and rising degree of consensus amongst the two political parties that have dominated government in Greece over the decades following the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, and which, in fact, currently share power in a coalition government: centre-right New Democracy and centre-left PASOK. Dendias himself is a member of New Democracy, and has been one of the most secure ministers of the coalition government (see further Cheliotis, in progress; also Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2013b). For a broader analysis of political discourse Downloaded from euc.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on November 25, 2013