Cheliotis and Xenakis 87 the rate of national GDP growth slipping back to being negative and the country’s ability to service the enormous debt it had acquired continuing to worsen. On the other hand, at no point since the passage of the bill did total prisoner numbers cease being high; throughout this period, for example, they were comparable to the numbers previously experienced when imprisonment was soaring in the mid- to late 2000s (see Figure 2). Moreover, the fall in prisoner numbers was anything but persistent or comprehensive. Overall, between 1 January 2015 (a few months before the bill was passed) and 1 January 2019 (a few months before the Syriza-led government stepped down), the total prisoner population declined by 9.7 percent (from 11,798 to 10,654). This was a result of a 21.3 percent reduction specifically in the number of convicted prisoners, which overshadowed the 34.2 percent increase in the number of pre-trial detainees. But the prisoner population had already stabilised by 2016, before returning to an upward course thereafter (see Figure 2). Similarly, the number of convicted prisoners had in effect plateaued by 2017, and resumed an upward trajectory in 2018, paralleling, from that point onwards, the rise in the number of pre-trial detainees, which had been continuing all along. What is more, although the number of convicted prisoners underwent an overall decline, the share of prisoners serving long terms actually increased significantly. At the beginning of 2015, for instance, the proportion of prisoners on sentences of five years and above was 78.6 percent of the total convicted prisoner population; at the beginning of 2019, it was up at 88.9 percent. In effect, then, the Syriza-led coalition government’s prison reform bill was undermined by judicial practice both in the sense that judges continued ordering pre-trial detention at excessive rates and also in that they expanded their imposition of long-term custodial sentences. Stubbornly high prisoner numbers, in combination with the fact that the rise in the operational capacity of the prison system was only negligible during the years under consideration, meant that prison overcrowding was bound to remain severe; indeed, at one of the highest levels by European comparison (Aebi and Tiago, 2018). But overcrowding was far from the only enduring problem in Greek prisons while the Syriza-led coalition was in power. Despite some positive developments in certain establishments, most notably the institution of a dedicated drug rehabilitation unit in the prison of Diavata in northern Greece and the strengthening of cognate services in a select number of prisons elsewhere in the country, the overall situation did not cease being dire. Accounts produced by the Greek Ombudsman, segments of the mass media and prisoner rights groups point to an array of persisting deficiencies, such as grossly insufficient healthcare, poor hygiene, inadequate food provision, and limited heating (see, for example, Efimerida ton Syntakton, 18 September 2016; Greek Ombudsman, 2019; To Pontiki, 9 October 2016). After a brief initial grace period, prisoner protests resumed and the country kept on attracting convictions at the ECtHR for violations of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (see, for example, Greek Ombudsman, 2019: 36). The preliminary findings reached by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (n.d.) based on its inspection of Greek prisons in December 2019 suggest that little progress was achieved before the coalition left office just a few months earlier. Prison conditions in Greece, the Working Group concluded, did ‘not generally meet international standards, particularly the Mandela Rules’.