<p>Over the past three decades, the prison population in Colombia and Latin America has increased due to various factors, including punitive policies, structural inequalities, and security-driven governance. While incarceration rates have recently declined in Europe and the United States, Colombia and Latin America tell a different story, one not of decarceration, but of the adaptation and transformation of penal control. While moments of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have temporarily disrupted the expansion of the penal system, they have not resulted in a reduction in the size of the penal state. Instead, these moments have fueled its extension&#xa0;through alternative mechanisms such as house arrest, electronic surveillance, and administrative controls, which relieve pressure on prisons without addressing the underlying structural problems. Through the notion of ‘liquid incarceration’, this article explores how changes to the penal system in Colombia over the past three decades have been shaped not only by global punitive trends but also by local institutional dynamics, judicial interventions, and crisis-driven adaptations that enable the system to adapt to change while maintaining high and extended levels of punitiveness. The activism of the Constitutional Court is a significant example of how judicial rulings, alongside long-term structural factors and short-term pressures, push the penal system and its actors to adjust and transform. However, rather than reversing punitive expansion, these adaptations redirect and reconfigure penal control. By situating the Colombian case within broader debates on punishment, the article challenges mechanistic and structuralist explanations of penal change. Instead, it emphasises the interplay between global trends, local institutional struggles, and contingent crises in shaping the evolution of prison governance and punishment in Latin America.</p>