About Tyree
Tyree is a founder of the MANN UP Association, a peer support and empowerment group that does work both inside the walls of SCI Phoenix and on the outside as well as a founder of the Pennsylvania Lifers Association. His work has inspired and uplifted the lives of hundreds of men both behind and beyond the walls. His perseverance and character provides an example for us all.
MANN UP
Since his transfer to SCI-Phoenix in 2018, Mr. Wallace has co-founded the “MANN Up! Association” program for prisoners preparing for release. Through a variety of small- and large-group therapy sessions, skits, and musical and spoken-word performances, this immensely popular program helps prisoners acknowledge and come to terms with the various traumas they have experienced and have perpetrated. Serving 300-400 persons at a time, each fifteen-week series supports prisoners in learning to take responsibility for their choices and to begin creating more positive paths for themselves, their families, and their communities. When participants of the Mann Up Association are released they are urged to continue meeting at the Mann Up Hub which is held at the Institute for Community Justice. The program operates with the enthusiastic support of the prison superintendent and staff. Further, the Mann Up Association’s newest endeavor, the gun violence reduction and public safety initiative has been endorsed by Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner.
As a result of the extension of MANN UP beyond prison walls, Tyree now has waiting for him a powerful infrastructure of "Block Captains," actively pursuing change in the community under the leadership he has created. Every other Saturday a team of formerly incarcerated MANN Up individuals can be found cleaning up their community and engaging with the members of their respective communities. From within SCI Phoenix, Tyree has managed to create a powerful movement generating real change in the communities of Philadelphia. He has accomplished so much from within the walls of prison and the sky is the limit for what he could accomplish along with the block captains upon his release.
PA Lifers Association
Tyree also founded a chapter of the Pennsylvania Lifers’ Association at SCI-Smithfield and served as the organization’s president. Through that organization, Mr. Wallace promoted a sense of community both inside and outside the institution. The organization has sponsored a family forum for inmates serving life sentences, has developed a youth awareness group, and has coordinated charitable drives to purchase winter coats and school supplies for needy children and to make donations to Big Brothers/Big Sisters and a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Mr. Wallace has also served as a founding member of the Unity Team, an inmate group focused on eliminating racial and ethnic divisions within the inmate population, and the Alliance Group, a support group for LGBT prisoners, of whom he's an ally.
