84 European Journal of Criminology 18(1) excessive rates, and persisting in making limited use of options of early release (see, further, Cheliotis, 2010, 2011; Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018). Such an effort to reduce prison overcrowding was actually under way in the build-up to the national elections of January 2015 that brought Syriza to power, as legislative amendments had been passed since 2012 under the coalition government led by right-ofcentre New Democracy to facilitate release on parole for various categories of prisoners. Indeed, by 2014, these amendments appeared to have borne fruit in terms of lowering prisoner numbers, although prison overcrowding was still very high. One-day snapshots published by the Greek Ministry of Justice, for example, show the total prisoner population to have fallen by 7 percent that year. Despite the fact that the measures in question were not reflective of a broader shift in policy, and they were, in fact, taken along with a plethora of punitive other initiatives (not least the bill passed in July 2014 to establish maximum-security prisons and block access to release on temporary licence for offenders convicted of serious crimes and violations of anti-terrorism laws), the reduction they seemed to have helped bring about in the prisoner population was a welcome development for a party that was soon to enter office and seek to promote a broader and progressive reform agenda relating to prison matters. With the Left at the helm: Prison reform under Syriza One of the first major pieces of legislation that the Syriza-led government brought to parliament was a bill whose central aims were, first, to abolish maximum-security prisons; second, to promote drug rehabilitation treatment for prisoners in need, for example by facilitating their voluntary participation in relevant schemes; and third, to reduce the use of custodial punishment and relieve prison overcrowding through an array of measures such as limiting the range of imprisonable offences for young people, setting limits to the prolonged detention of foreigners facing deportation after expiry of the custody term set by courts, and relaxing the eligibility criteria for parole, including for elderly and disabled prisoners. Although the bill in question was not exhaustive of the scope of prison reform that Syriza had been planning to effectuate, its passage and successful implementation were deemed vital to progressing with a series of further measures in due course so as eventually to accomplish a major overhaul of the country’s prison system as a whole. Not unexpectedly, a bitter conflict immediately ensued both in parliament and in the mass media. Syriza stood alone amongst elected parties, justifying the proposed bill by invoking humanitarian principles and pointing to the monetary and symbolic implications that relevant ECtHR rulings carried for the country. The other parliamentary forces – including Syriza’s junior coalition partner – expressed a variety of disagreements, some of which were also echoed by powerful judicial circles such as the Greek Union of Prosecutors. The most controversial aspects of the bill proved to be the scrapping of maximum-security establishments and the provision that facilitated access to early release on health grounds. The former, critics argued, indicated undue leniency towards hardened criminals and terrorists, and the latter would specifically allow Savvas Xiros, a prominent member of Greece’s long-standing urban guerrilla group November 17, to be freed under house arrest.