The memoir Re-Incarceration: A True Story of Life Inside the Revolving Door of Jail provides an unfiltered perspective on repeat incarceration through Michael 'Tyke' McCarthy's criminal history spanning five decades. McCarthy spent more than half of his 63 years inside prison walls, beginning with his first arrest at age eight and continuing through multiple state and federal sentences. His arrest record included armed bank robbery committed at age fifteen, numerous burglaries, and repeated parole violations that returned him to custody despite periods of release.
McCarthy served time across multiple correctional systems, including California Youth Authority facilities, state prisons such as San Quentin, and federal penitentiaries at the Florence complex in Colorado and Seagoville in Texas. The memoir details his experiences within these institutions, including time spent at facilities nicknamed 'gladiator school' for their extreme violence. He recounts participating in prison firefighting programs and describes a prison riot at the Florence Federal Correctional Institution that resulted in the loss of his front teeth. Throughout his narrative, McCarthy identifies alcohol addiction as a primary driver of his repeated returns to incarceration.
Despite growing up in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family in Marin County where his father played for the San Francisco Seals baseball team, McCarthy describes himself as the 'jet-black sheep' drawn to motorcycles and criminal activity from childhood. In 2000, he was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for armed bank robbery, with thirty family members and friends appearing at his sentencing hearing. After his release, parole violations related to alcohol led to an additional fourteen months of incarceration. When reflecting on his decades of criminal activity and imprisonment, McCarthy stated: 'It was an embarrassing waste of time.'
Re-Incarceration joins a growing body of literature examining the American criminal justice system from the perspective of those who have lived within it. The phenomenon McCarthy documents aligns with Bureau of Justice Statistics data showing approximately 44 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within their first year of release, a pattern commonly referred to as the 'revolving door' of incarceration. This statistical reality underscores the systemic challenges the memoir illustrates through personal experience.
Published by Parker Publishers, the book represents McCarthy's first published work as he transitions from his career as a demolition worker. In 2023, McCarthy experienced five strokes while working at a demolition site, leaving him with partial paralysis and vision impairment. He currently resides in Northern California with his wife, Reba, and recently completed his parole for the first time in four decades, marking a significant milestone in his personal journey beyond the criminal justice system.
