To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back

This prison memoir vividly recounts a life of abuse, crime, and incarceration, and reveals the harrowing reality inside America’s broken prison system.

When Ernie López was a boy selling newspapers in Depression-era Los Angeles, he would face beatings from his father for not bringing home enough money. When the beatings became unbearable, López took to petty stealing to make up the difference. By thirteen, he was stealing cars, a practice that landed him in California’s harshest juvenile reformatory. So began his cycle of crime and incarceration.

López spent decades in some of America’s most notorious prisons, including four and a half years on death row for a murder he insists he did not commit. To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back is the story of a man who refused to be broken by his abusive father, or by America’s abusive criminal justice system.

While López admits “I’ve been no angel,” his insider’s account of life in Alcatraz and San Quentin graphically reveals the violence, arbitrary punishment, and unending monotony that give rise to gang cultures within the prisons and practically insure that parolees will commit far worse crimes when they return to the streets.