TEXAS:

Hours before she was executed, Karla Faye Tucker gave the top prison official 3 handwritten pages with suggestions on how Texas prisons can improve the rehabilitation of inmates.

Tucker's suggestions to make inmates more responsible and ready for freedom were "insightful," but wouldn't be followed,
prison chief Allan Polunsky said Wednesday. He was "not looking to her for guidance as to how to run the department,"
he said.
Tucker, a drug-crazed prostitute turned born-again Christian behind bars, hacked a man and woman to death during a 1983 break-in.
She sought a reprieve with the hope she could help others behind bars, but was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday.

The 2nd woman executed in the nation since 1984 and the 1st in Texas since the Civil War, Tucker drew worldwide attention and support from death penalty opponents.
Tucker, 38, suggested that the prisons should strive to make inmates more responsible and self-sufficient by paying them for the work they do and requiring them to buy food and other necessities, the Houston Chronicle reported Thursday.
"When a person enters (prison), they are fed 3 square meals, have a roof over their head, are given clothes to wear, schooling, medical and many other things FREE,"
Tucker wrote.
Prison officials also should provide better life skills and training, and punish those who balk at working by putting them in isolation,
she wrote.
The system leaves inmates dependent and irresponsible, and when they are released, they can't live on their own and end up back in prison,
she wrote.
"The heart of her proposition is that the state pay inmates for labor they provide within the prison system, and I am adamantly opposed to that," said Polunsky, chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice.
"I see no merit in it at all and no support from any faction,whether it be from the legislature or the state leadership."

(source for both: Reuters)
Rick Halperin
AI-Texas