Without disregarding the reality of having dis-proportioned numbers of people with disabilities (psychiatric, cognitive, learning disabilities in particular) in jails and prisons, I will caution against declarations that jails are becoming the largest mental health facilities in the U.S and offer a more nuanced explanation that incorporates perspectives from critical prison studies with disability studies/mad studies frameworks to shed new light on processes of incarceration and deinstitutionalization at present and in the past.