What’s Left? Political orientation, economic conditions and incarceration in Greece under Syriza-led government
| Author | Leonidas K. Cheliotis,Sappho Xenakis |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370820966568 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370820966568
European Journal of Criminology
2021, Vol. 18(1) 74 –100
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370820966568
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What’s Left? Political
orientation, economic
conditions and incarceration
in Greece under Syriza-led
government
Leonidas K. Cheliotis
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Sappho Xenakis
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Abstract
An important body of scholarly work has been produced over recent decades to explain
variation in levels and patterns of state punishment across and within different countries around
the world. Two variables that have curiously evaded systematic attention in this regard are,
first, the orientation of incumbent governments along the political spectrum, and second, the
experience and fiscal implications of national economic downturn. Although recent years have
seen both variables receive somewhat greater consideration, there is still precious little research
into the effects on state punishment that they have in interaction with one another. With a
view to helping fill this gap in the literature, this article identifies the direction and assesses
the extent of influence exerted by government political orientation, on the one hand, and by
economic downturn alongside its fiscal repercussions, on the other hand, upon the evolution of
incarceration in the context of contemporary Greece. In so doing, we offer a uniquely detailed
account of carceral trends before and during the period that a coalition government led by the
left-wing Syriza party was in power. With regard to carceral trends, the scope of our analysis
extends beyond conventional imprisonment also to include immigration detention. As well as
arguing 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
of foreign forces intervening in both economic and political realms.
Corresponding author:
Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Associate Professor of Criminology, Department of Social Policy, London School of
Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: l.cheliotis@lse.ac.uk
966568EUC0010.1177/1477370820966568European Journal of CriminologyCheliotis and Xenakis
research-article2020
Special Issue: Human rights, prisons and penal policies
Cheliotis and Xenakis 75
Keywords
Political orientation, Greece, Syriza, imprisonment, immigration detention, economic downturn
Introduction
Over the last four decades or so, the spread as well as the harshness of state punishment
have increased in many different parts of the world. Yet not all countries around the
globe have experienced either or both of these trends, and some of those that have done
so in the past appear latterly to have been reversing course. Although an important body
of scholarly work has been produced to explain variation in levels and, to a lesser
degree, patterns of punishment, especially with reference to imprisonment across or
within select Western democracies, no consensus has as yet been reached as to the
causes underlying the phenomena in question. More often than not, the ongoing debate
has been focused on the ordering of, and the interrelationship between, the array of
causal forces that have already been identified in pertinent research, including, for
example, electoral interests, pressure-group lobbying, cultural shifts, economic sys-
tems, the scale and scope of socio-economic inequality, political and legal institutions,
and international human rights pressures. Owing perhaps to the complexity of the task
much less effort has been undertaken in terms of scrutinising and, as necessary, broad-
ening the range of those causes thereby arguably risking an insufficiently holistic inves-
tigation of the subject.
Two variables that have usually evaded systematic attention are, first, the orientation
of incumbent governments along the political spectrum, and second, the experience and
fiscal implications of national economic downturn. Although recent years have seen both
variables receive somewhat greater consideration, there is still precious little research
into the effects that they have on state punishment in interaction with one another. With
a view to helping fill this gap in the literature, this article identifies the direction and
assesses the extent of influence exerted by government political orientation, on the one
hand, and by economic downturn alongside its fiscal repercussions, on the other hand,
upon the evolution of incarceration in the context of contemporary Greece. In so doing,
we offer a uniquely detailed account of carceral trends before and during the period that
a coalition government led by the left-wing Syriza party was in power.
With regard to carceral trends, the scope of our analysis extends beyond conven-
tional imprisonment to include immigration detention as well; namely, the use of sepa-
rate, dedicated sites where irregular migrants from non-EU countries are detained for
the purposes of administrative procedures relating to their immigration status, specifi-
cally deportation and asylum processing. This is not only due to the relationship of
operational homology that has increasingly bound conventional imprisonment and
immigration detention together, most evidently in the sense that sustained physical
restrictions to free movement and other enforced deprivations commonly associated
with the former have evolved into a prevalent feature of the latter, too (see, further,
Peters and Turner, 2017; Loyd et al., 2012).1 It is also in recognition of the legislative
conflation and functional equivalence that characterises these two forms of incarcera-
tion in the particular environment of Greece. First and foremost, under Greek law,
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