-36. The Greek authorities have continuously asserted that action was being taken to improve the situation. For example, by letter of 23 November 2009, they informed the CPT that administrative detention of irregular migrants in police and border guard stations would be ended and that, in the future, administratively detained irregular migrants would only be accommodated in dedicated detention facilities. It was also stated that the Piraeus aliens detention facility, which the CPT had been criticising repeatedly since 1997, would be demolished in early 2010. 7. Regrettably, the findings made during the CPT’s most recent visit to Greece, in January 2011, demonstrated that the information provided by the authorities was not reliable. Police and border guard stations continued to hold ever greater numbers of irregular migrants in even worse conditions. For example, at Soufli police and border guard station, in the Evros region, members of the Committee’s delegation had to walk over persons lying on the floor to access the detention facility. There were 146 irregular migrants crammed into a room of 110 m², with no access to outdoor exercise or any other possibility to move around and with only one functioning toilet and shower at their disposal; 65 of them had been held in these deplorable conditions for longer than four weeks and a number for longer than four months. They were not even permitted to change their clothes. At times, women were placed in the detention facility together with the men. Similar conditions existed at almost all the police premises visited by the CPT’s delegation. In the purposebuilt Filakio special holding facility for foreigners in the Evros region, irregular migrants, including juveniles and families with young children, were kept locked up for weeks and months in filthy, overcrowded, unhygienic cage-like conditions, with no daily access to outdoor exercise. As for the Piraeus facility mentioned above, it continues to operate and, in January 2011, was holding irregular migrants in far worse conditions than those first described in the report on the 1997 visit. Likewise, Athens airport detention facility continued to hold people in conditions akin to those recently found by the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, to be in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights; no action has been taken to implement the recommendations concerning this facility first put forward by the CPT in the report on its 2005 visit. 8. The CPT has emphasised time and again the need to address the structural deficiencies in Greece’s detention policy, and has attempted to exercise its preventive function by recommending practical measures to ensure that all irregular migrants deprived of their liberty are held in decent conditions. However, the Committee has been met by inaction from the Greek authorities in addressing the very serious concerns raised. 9. The same is true with regard to the situation in prisons. The CPT has observed a steady deterioration in the living conditions and treatment of prisoners over the past decade. The Committee has identified a number of fundamental structural issues which serve to undermine attempts to remedy this state of affairs. They include the lack of a strategic plan to manage prisons, which are complex institutions, the absence of an effective system of reporting and supervision, and inadequate management of staff. The CPT has highlighted in its reports the unsuitable material conditions, the absence of an appropriate regime and the poor provision of health care. It has found that due to the totally inadequate staffing levels, effective control within the accommodation areas of some of the prisons visited has progressively been ceded to groups of strong prisoners. All these issues are compounded by the severe overcrowding within most Greek prisons.