Carceral moderation and the Janus face of international pressure: A long view of Greece’s engagement with the European Convention of Human Rights

What’s Left? Political orientation, economic conditions and incarceration in Greece under Syriza-led government

“…As we proceed to demonstrate, however, both of these efforts were frustrated, in stark contrast to the EU's intervention effectively in favour of severity -indeed, infringement of the European human rights regime -in Greek immigration detention matters. This confirms two key conclusions from our previous research on the forces that have shaped the carceral policies and practices enacted in Greece over time: first, that just as international pressures may assume different and even contradictory forms, so too they may vary according to their respective causal import; and second, that the actual impact of external actors has predominantly been a negative one (see, further, Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018).…”

“…That prison overcrowding remained severe anyway was because of self-defeating provisions usually contained within such legislation itself (for example, overly restrictive definitions of parole eligibility) and, even more so, due to conservative resistance on the part of the judiciary. That is to say, judges typically reacted to decarcerative blips in government policy by increasing their recourse to long-term custodial sentences, continuing to order pre-trial detention at excessive rates, and persisting in making limited use of options of early release (see, further, Cheliotis, 2010Cheliotis, , 2011Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018).…”

“…Both the problems bedevilling conditions in Greek prisons and the Greek state’s persistent failure to improve them became subject to a long series of damning reports by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) and a host of national and international non-governmental organisations and media outlets. Meanwhile, prisoner unrest and even riots became increasingly frequent, and there was a steady upsurge from the 2000s onwards not just in the volume of applications lodged with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) by prisoners claiming they had suffered inhuman or degrading treatment in Greek prisons, but also in the number of convictions and fines the ECtHR meted out to Greece in this regard (see, further, Cheliotis, 2012; Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018).…”

“…Such pressures, however, did little to help reverse the course of the country’s prison policy and practice. Successive Greek governments typically responded to criticism with a combination of denial and defiance (Cheliotis, 2012; Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018), in a context where the country continued to have one of the poorest records in implementing ECtHR judgments (Anagnostou and Mungiu-Pippidi, 2014). When the Syriza-led coalition was installed in government in early 2015, the Greek prison system was close to ‘breaking point’, as the CPT concluded in a report it produced based on inspection of several Greek prisons at the time.…”

Human rights oversight of correctional institutions in Australia

“…Whether this nudged Australia is unclear, but the decision to ratify OPCAT was expressly linked to Australia’s desire to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council. 2 Taken with the detention scandals noted earlier, we may also be seeing human rights concepts having increasing ‘ideational attractiveness’, which may be more influential than simple rewards and punishments (Xenakis and Cheliotis, 2018: 40).…”