For many years after the end of the Civil War, Greek police forces were employed by national administrations to persecute communist and leftist activists and sympathizers. Thousands of persons were exiled to various "prison islands" in the Aegean. The military dictatorship of 1967-74 widened this practice to include subjecting all of its critics, regardless of their political or ideological orientation, to arrest and exile. The threat of communism, however, was most often the pretext for such procedures. The military regime rarely respected articles of the constitution prescribing civil and political liberties, although no steps were taken to suspend such articles. During that period, military courts tried many civilian crimes, and in many cases such trials deprived opponents of the regime of their citizenship.

Immediately after the fall of the junta, the Karamanlis government restored civil liberties, and the constitution ratified in 1975 fully guarantees equality before the law, due process of law, and the inviolability of individual rights. In the mid-1990s, police brutality is a rare occurrence, and police officers who exceed the limits of their authority during arrests or police interrogations are immediately suspended pending the results of an official inquiry on each case.

The crime rate in Greece is fairly low. A recent increase is attributed to the large influx of illegal immigrants. According to Greek police sources, among the refugees who left Albania in the early 1990s were a large number of convicted criminals who were encouraged to depart by the regime of Albania's President Ramiz Alia. For the indigenous population of Greece, however, ethnic and religious homogeneity has combined with close-knit family structures to instill a sense of social discipline and acceptance of authority (see The Social Order , ch. 2).

Nevertheless, the police still do not enjoy great popularity in Greece. After governments had used them repeatedly to oppress the people (most notably after the end of the Civil War and during the rule of the 1967-74 junta), the police were treated by the public with suspicion and even animosity. In the aftermath of the junta, a number of police officers were tried for human rights violations, and others were dismissed from service. In 1984 a series of reforms culminated in the merging of the City Police and the Gendarmerie, placing routine police activities under local rather than national control.

Data as of December 1994

NOTE: The information regarding Greece on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Greece PUBLIC ORDER information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Greece PUBLIC ORDER should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.