In this concluding chapter, I draw together the substantive findings of this book and reflect upon the broader theoretical implications of the analysis presented here. I consider the intersecting physical and sociological footprints of the contemporary penal state, and I explore the various ways in which prison building programmes work to ‘depoliticise the political’. I examine the capital capacities that have shaped penal policymaking in England and Wales since the mid-1990s punitive turn and I review interesting shifts in how considerations of time and temporality are perceived by penal elites. Finally, I examine the gradual transformation of the penal state and demonstrate how careful analyses of the politics of prison building programmes can help us to illuminate the endogenous processes of displacement, layering, drift and conversion that animate institutional change. The book concludes with a short postscript that brings us back, full circle, to the 2024 UK General Election and the ambiguity of all building legacies.