“All my life I have wanted to make a big difference in the world. I feel like it’s why I am here. And that begins with ensuring that no one is taken advantage of, and has opportunities to improve themselves. I don’t like handouts, I like to provide empowerment so people can become independent. This ultimately helps communities as a whole.”

So says Tyler King, previous military and current Dallas, Texas businessman, whose first company reached $1 million in revenue before he was even finished with high school. He’s currently the CEO of business consulting firm Assuras, Inc., which provides companies with efficiency practices and technology solutions to streamline everyday operations. 

He’s also the voice behind the A Voice From Prison project.

He’s currently incarcerated and serving a six-and-a-half year sentence, having been convicted of a so-called conspiracy to digitally access company information. This charge, like so many others, provides an incomplete picture of what actually happened. 

Although Tyler’s time and freedom have been temporarily taken from him, the experience has crystallized his personal vision and motivation to fight for constitutional rights and criminal justice reform.

Prior to incarceration, Tyler King had no reason to think that the criminal justice system would ever really have any direct impact on his life. In his own words, “I came from a middle-class family, had good, faithful Christian parents, grew up in a nice home and had a decent life. I was a successful entrepreneur at a young age, started companies, and later went on to Ivy League schools for my education. I thought I was doing everything right.”

Without delving into the specifics of his case, he was a law-abiding citizen who made a misguided decision for the sole purpose of providing help to someone who needed it. 

He’s a pilot who flies helicopters; he’s also a scuba diver and an accomplished photographer. But when he’s completed his sentence, he will undoubtedly experience at least some degree of the pervasive stigma that surrounds the formerly incarcerated. Because of his existing professional accomplishments, Tyler King will most likely be able to resume daily life with less difficulty than his current fellow inmates.

According to “Experience of Stigma Post Incarceration”, a 2020 study conducted by Rebecca Sinko, Tina DeAngelis, Bernadette Alpajora, Josephine Beker, and Ilyse Kramer, “The bias, arising from stigmatizing perceptions of formerly incarcerated people, makes it increasingly difficult for one to escape the effects of a criminal record when seeking employment. Private landlords and public programs also adopt the same principles as employers when it comes to housing… over six million people in the United States have a criminal record that localities often use as a basis to restrict access to housing.” 

Tyler King’s goal is to set things right from the inside out. His business strategies for Assuras, Inc. closely align to his personal values; the consulting firm fixes business problems, starting from the bottom. In Tyler’s view, speaking with management can instill bias that prevents efficient problem solving, so Assuras associates speak with the lowest-level employees first to get an idea of how the company truly operates, including pain points that employees and customers experience. 

This method of problem solving provides sustainable, long-term solutions for companies that prepares them for the constantly-evolving world of business. It’s a great strategy, and Assuras’ success proves that it works.

But it’s also his approach to criminal justice reform. Can someone who’s never been incarcerated ever truly understand what it’s like? Hearing secondhand stories about the injustices faced by inmates is very different from experiencing them yourself– just like speaking to company bigwigs about operations issues is very different from witnessing them firsthand and speaking with lower-level employees about what is happening and why.

He regularly updates a blog about his experiences as an inmate; a recent update described a lockdown across all 122 federal prisons in the United States. This lockdown occurred as a result of violence at a facility far away from the one where Tyler is currently incarcerated, but he and his fellow inmates were subject to a complete blackout– meaning no phone calls, access to computers, or visitation.

People who aren’t incarcerated and don’t know anyone who is might not have heard anything about this lockdown, nor the violation of human and constitutional rights it presented to inmates– depriving them of not just the access to legal resources they’re constitutionally entitled to, but the basic human rights of social interaction, exercise, and fresh air. News coverage surrounding the lockdown existed, but focused primarily on the perspectives of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Director and the American Federation of Government Employees’ President.

Commentary focusing on inmates’ perspective was sparse. Without input from inmates like Tyler King of A Voice From Prison and Robert Barton from More Than Our Crimes, the narrative presented by the bigwigs would prevail. But as the proverb says, “the man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones”. Tyler King’s dispatches from “the inside” are those small stones, carried away from the mountain of injustices in our nation’s judicial system.

Learn more at www.avoicefromprison.com.