In this chapter, I investigate the spatial and relational geography of prison building in England and Wales since the mid-1990s punitive turn. I reflect upon the key determinants of prison siting, design and construction, and I argue that penal elites must learn to navigate this strategically selective context in ways that produce highly patterned policy implementation behaviours. Drawing upon interview data, Prison Service reports and historic satellite imagery, I present a systematic analysis of these patterns and present a typology of four developmental methodologies or approaches that are relied upon to translate prison expansionism into dynamic built environments: single-site expansion, ‘new for old’ site development, the single-site complex and local prison cluster. I reflect upon the wider implications of the analysis presented here and what these unfolding developmental logics mean for the moral and communicative functions of state punishment, the carceral texture of imprisonment and the way space is organised in contemporary society.