argued in a report by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights and the University of Bristol on the impact of NPMs, individual complaints ‘can serve as evidence to support recommendations, and promote their implementation in the dialogue with the authorities, as well as the communication and cooperation with other actors and the NPM’s public relations’ (Murray et al., 2015, pp. 60-1). They too visit detention facilities to participate in the monitoring of returns, during which they are able to observe the site and speak with detainees. While these multiple capacities, NPM staff report, provide them with useful information to build an intelligence file on every detention centre, which they can then use during their inspections, this context has had a profound impact on the NPM staff, with most expressing feelings of burnout and emotional fatigue. Trust and methodology In 2019, the NPM visited six police and coast guard facilities and six pre-removal detention centres, as well as five prisons, where foreign nationals may be detained (The Greek Ombudsman, 2020). However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 they did not undertake any visits and thus decided not to publish a report. Up to June 2021, they had not resumed their monitoring activities. While the number of visits they conducted each year is not necessarily a small one, a closer look at their methodology of visits presents a picture of hesitant staff insecure in their role and mandate, which, then, allowed for a dubious relationship with police administration on the ground. Prison and detention inspections are mostly unannounced. In their inspections, the NPM follows a checklist based on CPT standards, to observe life in detention, living conditions, register vulnerable cases, segregation, check the number of asylum requests, the provision of services and activities, staffing issues and access to outdoor exercise and the outside world. However, they did not appear to use this checklist in any of the inspections we shadowed. As the Greek NPM is relatively new and has, in any case, been largely inactive during the Covid-19 pandemic, their methodology is still under construction. Drawing on knowledge exchange visits and collaboration with other NPMs and human rights organisations in Europe and abroad, the Greek NPM has worked on evolving their inspection practices. They have increased the duration of their inspections from one day to two days. However, this is the case only in prisons visits. Immigration detention inspections remain very brief and, in any case, do not exceed four or five hours. The frantic atmosphere- in all centres 144