90 European Journal of Criminology 18(1) overcrowding, extremely poor sanitation, little to no access to medical services, and physical ill-treatment on a frequent basis, distress about all of which sometimes led to protests that were met with violent police reaction (Cheliotis, 2013; Kalpouzos and Mann, 2015; Nowak, 2019). As these conditions persisted, the number of convictions Greece received from the ECtHR for related violations of Article 3 of the ECHR increased. Indeed, in January 2011, the ECtHR ruled that detention practices in Greece were such that the Dublin II Agreement should be suspended so that other EU memberstates cease transferring migrants who had entered the EU via Greece back to the country (Koutsouraki, 2017; Nowak, 2019). The election of a right-of-centre New Democracy government in June 2012 marked the start of an increased use of detention to address irregular migration in the country. Against a background of intensifying xenophobia and deep financial crisis, the Greek government introduced the 2012 Action Plan on Asylum and Migration Management, a revised version of which was put to the European Commission in January 2013. The plan promised a modernised asylum system with improved protections for vulnerable migrants, and an increase in detention capacity of 4500 places – a three-fold expansion of space – through the launch of new dedicated immigration detention facilities (many termed ‘pre-removal detention centres’), as well as reception and identification centres (RICs), the latter mostly operating as so-called ‘hotspots’ on the Aegean islands. Under the new plan, migrants were systematically to be placed in detention as a direct consequence of their irregular status, and the system was rolled out shortly after the launch of a police operation of unprecedented magnitude to capture and detain irregular migrants around the country. However, degrading conditions inside detention sites remained, so much so that mass detainee protests became commonplace (Cheliotis, 2013; Koutsouraki, 2017; Mavrikos-Adamou, 2017). Syriza entered government at a juncture when irregular migration was swelling, and was shortly to reach unprecedented proportions. Already, following a hardening of controls at the country’s land border with Turkey under the previous government in 2013, record numbers of irregular migrants had arrived via Greece’s sea border with Turkey in 2014. Migrant detention under Syriza On entering office, Syriza transformed state discourse around irregular migrants by pushing for consistent referencing of their human rights, centred around the notion that ‘no migrant is illegal’ (Nestoras, 2016; Skleparis, 2017). On the policy front, in February 2015, just three weeks after beginning its tenure, the government introduced a range of measures designed to reduce the use of immigration detention and to alleviate conditions within detention sites. A prior ministerial decision allowing for detention beyond 18 months was revoked, and those held pursuant to that decision were immediately released, along with detainees judged to belong to vulnerable groups. Additionally, the maximum period of detention was limited to 6 months (Koutsouraki, 2017). These measures did reduce the numbers of those detained, which, in its turn, helped tackle the problem of overcrowding in a large number of detention sites around the country. A CPT inspection in April 2015, for example, found that the four operational centres were holding 988 persons for a capacity of 5033, and another 2000 irregular migrants