* Myrl E. Alexander; Former Head of U.S. Prison System

Myrl E. Alexander, 83, former head of the U.S. prison system and a leader in offering inmates productive work, schooling and training for jobs after they had completed their sentences. Alexander was one of the first to boost prisoners’ morale by offering weekend passes to those who had proved trustworthy and to let others leave for halfway houses, where they worked and studied. He was a key adviser on the 1965 Federal Prisoner Rehabilitation Act and helped President Lyndon B. Johnson reorganize the Bureau of Prisons in the late 1960s. Alexander was a university chemistry major who graduated during the Depression but could not find work. He took a prison job in 1931 and retired in 1970, six years after assuming the directorship of the federal prisons. During and after World War II, he headed the civilian prisons in the U.S.-occupied zones of Germany. In Corpus Christi, Tex., on Thursday after a series of strokes.