96 European Journal of Criminology 18(1) ongoing economic woes and its deepening financial subordination to the European establishment allowed the EU to force upon the country policies and practices of immigration detention that suited the EU’s own political orientation. In other words, what proved decisive was not Syriza’s leftist ideology, or the ideological division within the coalition or even within Greece, but rather the ideological position taken by Greece’s EU partners, who maintained a resolute unwillingness to establish anything like a systematic dispersal resettlement arrangement across the Schengen area, and Greece’s clearly subordinate status in relation to them. In essence, then, our analysis of Greek carceral policy and practice after the assumption of office by a coalition led by Syriza goes beyond suggesting that economic downturn can place crucial limits on a government’s ability to execute progressive plans in carceral matters. We additionally conclude that a government’s scope of action in this vein may be further restricted depending on the autonomy it can wield in defiance not only of domestic opposition but also – and, in the Greek case, certainly more importantly – of foreign forces intervening in both economic and political realms. To put the point differently, just as foreign forces may combine with economic downturn (and domestic opposition, at that) to undermine a government’s agenda for progressive reform to carceral policy and practice, the degree to which they might successfully do so is contingent upon the relative politico-economic might of the state that the government in question represents in the international sphere. Acknowledgements We are grateful to Tim Newburn, Gaëtan Cliquennois, Sonja Snacken, Dirk Van Zyl Smit and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their feedback on an earlier version of this article. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ORCID iD Leonidas Cheliotis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2707-853X Notes 1. 2. 3. Recent years have seen increasing recognition being paid to the need for studying state punishment – and, within this context, incarceration itself – with reference to a variety of indicators so as to produce more holistic assessments (see, for example, Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2016; Karstedt, 2013; Newburn, 2020, in press; Tonry, 2007;). The term ‘caseload’ refers to the total number of cases of individuals held in custody during a given year (see, further, Cheliotis, 2011). The article’s discussion of trends in the prisoner caseload and prison admissions is based on the authors’ re-analysis of data compiled and published by the National Statistical Service of Greece (NSSG) on its freely accessible website (https://www.statistics.gr). For further information on the Greek prison system during the period under consideration, see Cheliotis (2011, 2012) and Cheliotis and Xenakis (2016). On judicial culture and its conservative dimensions in Greece, see, further, Vagena-Palaiologou (2006).