Cheliotis and Xenakis 79 assess its actual impact on incarceration, first in relation to conventional imprisonment and then in relation to migrant detention. Greece’s economic crisis and the ascent of Syriza-led government Economic upheaval began in Greece with the 2008 downturn, which affected many countries internationally. At least within the European Union, however, no other state experienced so deep or prolonged a crisis as Greece (see, for example, Matsaganis, 2018). By the time that a Syriza-led coalition government was formed in January 2015, the Greek economy was getting closer and closer to collapse. In an effort to manage the inordinate size of Greece’s sovereign debt and overcome the country’s consequent inability to access bond markets, previous governments had already received two bailout packages from the Troika, the first in 2010 and the second in 2012. Each of those packages had come, on the one hand, with a broad range of strict conditions such as austerity measures, the further deregulation of the labour market, the sale of valuable public assets, and in-depth public administration reforms; and, on the other hand, with heavy involvement on the part of creditors in domestic policy-making more generally and their close oversight of the implementation of the measures at issue (Ioannidis, 2014). Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the Troika’s intervention was harsher in Greece – whether in terms of the content of the specific measures demanded, control over broader policy design dealing with social and economic matters, or supervision of pertinent implementation procedures – than in other countries of the European periphery (Clifton et al., 2018). Towards the end of 2014, as the Greek economy tumbled further into recession and public anger intensified about the impact of austerity and foreign meddling in Greece’s internal affairs, implementation of the second loan package stalled. Snap elections were called soon thereafter, with Syriza campaigning as an anti-austerity party that would tear up the excoriating bailout agreements and take ‘immediate measures to fight the humanitarian crisis’, in reference to the worsened rates of unemployment, poverty, deprivation and ill health in Greek society at the time (Matsaganis, 2018). Although Syriza won the elections with 36.3 percent of the vote and was thereby catapulted firmly into a leading role in national Greek politics, it still fell two seats short of an outright majority. The party nevertheless managed to assume office thanks to a coalition it quickly formed with Independent Greeks (ANEL), a small far-rightist party with deeply reactionary views on a range of issues, not least on matters of law and order and immigration, yet one that shared Syriza’s anti-austerity agenda and its open opposition to foreign intervention in domestic affairs. As has typically been the case with the few coalition governments to have emerged in Greece since the restoration of democracy in the country in 1974, the status of the senior partner allowed Syriza to retain a tight grip over nearly all government business. Indeed, only one cabinet portfolio (that of the Ministry of Defence) was allocated to the junior partner as payoff for its participation in government (see, further, Tsatsanis and Teperoglou, 2019).