Ex Gang Chief, Now a Deacon Bringing Faith To Cook County Jail Inmates

By Robert R. Schwarz

Keep watching and praying, that you may not come

into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is

weak.   ( Mark 14: 38… Jesus to his disciples )

Some will fall away from the faith, paying  attention

 to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

( 1 Timothy 4: 1 )

So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word

 of Christ. ( Romans 10:17 )

          

  Even on the most colorful of  Spring days, the outside of  the  Cook County jail on the Southwest side of Chicago  with its  eleven  buildings spread over eight city blocks  is a foreboding site.  After you have squeezed your  car into a space along California Avenue  (which might have a mal-functioning parking   meter)  and ask yourself when the long stretch of curbside rubble  was last picked up,  you are engulfed  by a world of steel gates and   tombstone-gray cement . Your walk across the street , and on the way to the jail's main entrance,  you notice  the grim faces , not of released inmates but of visitors .  If you dread   going in , that's normal, as is your being thankful you are not among one of the 8, 200 male inmates  here nor one of the  five hundred confined  women. 

            Two blocks from the jail's main entrance is the Assumption Church  and the Kolbe House  (named after Saint Maximilian Kolbe , the Polish Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of another prisoner in the Nazi  death camp of Auschwitz ) . Now pulling into the Kolbe   parking lot after a drive from his home near Midway Airport is  Pablo Perez, age 49 .  He is a Catholic deacon and the  Kolbe associate director, managing 30 volunteers. He also  is a former  street gang chief who narrowly avoided   becoming one of the  inmates to whom  he now ministers as their chaplain. 

        

  An hour later Pablo is in the  jail's depths , in a chapel crowded with a dozen young men—average age  30—who are  gathered for their weekly communion service . They  begin reading from the Old and New Testaments,   the  communion liturgy . Pablo leads them in prayer, followed by group  discussions facilitated  by Kolbe House volunteers.  Most of the men  are Afro-Americans,  perhaps a  fourth  Hispanic  and one or two are  Caucasian.  Their religious backgrounds are  Catholic and various Protestant denominations; an estimated 40 per cent of all inmates with whom Pablo interacts are Catholic,  many nominally  so.  Services for non-Christian denominations  such as Islam  are also held in the jail.    

         Most inmates will be freed after two months of confinement ; some  will be confined for as many as two years waiting  for a court trial  because they cannot  afford a lawyer and have to depend on a public defender  overburdened with cases.

One by one the men come to the altar to orally take the    wheat host Pablo offers them and then to  return to the pews before he gives  the final blessing. Communion wine is  forbidden. As the men exit the room, a few  men  linger for an opportunity to approach their deacon in semi-privacy. Some simply seek an encouraging  word from him ,  others for a final blessing after he has heard  their "confession . " Pablo hears their regret or sense of guilt  for stealing,   for drug addiction (  quite common here ) , even for offenses such as drunk driving or driving  with a revoked license. No one during Pablo's tenure as chaplain has confessed murder to him.  Pablo gives them spiritual comfort and guidance, but  the Catholic church  authorizes only   priests to  absolve an individual from a church-recognized  sin. He also is chaplain for the 675 inmates at the Lake County jail in nearby Waukegan , where he ministers to inmates only individually.

This deacon Pablo prays often for the
inmates and they for him. 

             When I had asked Deacon Pablo during our interview in his office  about the most  commonly confessed offense ,  I expected to hear about prostitution or violent crimes. He  replied instead : " They regret they walked away from their faith—as an adult.  They tell me they never would have done those things nor be where they are now if they had not walked away from God . "

Pablo's Gang Life and Conversion

 Pablo  is a stocky five-foot-seven  inches tall . His black hair is cut short , he wears glasses ,  and  during our conversation  he wore H a plain  black sweater. When I asked him to describe the details of his past street  gang activity,  he took off his glasses and looked away as a man  about to revisit an unforgettable  dream .  

It is a June morning on the North Side of Chicago , and sixteen-year-old Pablo and seven  members of the gang he leads are hanging on the busy , noisy corner of Montrose  and Paulina. The few square yards of cements on which they stand—their bodies in constant motion and  their Spanish anything but genteel—provides them with a sort of jungle thicket secrecy even in the midst of a constant pedestrian flow. Though Pablo's mother knows she can always find her son here, she has never known he belongs to a neighborhood gang (and has since  age 14 )  and that he  leads it— nor that her son is on the brink of drug addiction.   

Approaching them now are four white teenager,  three boys and a girl. They are Baptists and each is carrying a Bible. They ask the  gang if  they could pray for them. The invitation scatters the gang . Except for Pablo, who stays. His father, a Catholic who had raised his son Catholic,  had instilled in him respect for anyone from a church, regardless of its  denomination.  And Dad also had made sure that no matter how hung-over his son was on Sunday morning after a night of drinking,  Pablo went to church.

The Baptist teens and Pablo all  hold  hands and  pray. It is  the very first time he has prayed earnestly , seriously.  Yet, all  Pablo would ever remember of this was  the question  they now ask him:  "Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior?"  Pablo says  yes.   Two weeks later he quits his gang.

But the gang does  not quit him.  They want him dead, or,  at the least, beaten savagely. They hate him not only because his leadership   behavior towards them  has been aggressive, sometimes violent, but more so because they take  his conversion  as an intolerable , unforgivable attack upon  their self-worth.  

In our interview, Pablo  said that quitting the gang was the best  choice ever made in his life.  "  I had many fears that  I was going to wind up in prison or dead because of how involved I was getting. Being a gang member you can't avoid crime in your life. But   I never went to jail. I was one of the lucky ones. "

Five years after his street corner conversion , Pablo married  a  Juanita , a convert from the Pentecostal faith who today is a surgical coordinator at the University of Illinois,  Chicago campus . Their marriage from the start,  however, was seriously threatened by Pablo's continuing drug addiction. He came home one day  to discover that his wife had left him.  Pablo recalls that in that moment, he  realized he could not have both  the highs of his  drugs and his family. Once again he  vowed a life-changing yes.

Three weeks later Juanita returned  to an addiction-free husband  and today, after 27 years of marriage,  the couple have raised three children , ages 26, 25, and 21. They attend a Catholic church.  " And none of them ever joined a gang,"  Pablo affirms. "I made sure of that.  I was involved with them  all the time, knew what they were doing and who their friends were . " He still sits down and talks  with these friends—"as I talk to my adult  kids, " he says.  

Becoming a Chaplain

Pablo was born in Guatemala and immigrated here  at age four  with his  parents and a younger brother  . The family settled in Chicago,  and his  father went to  work in a factory .   Years after graduating  from Senn high school , Pablo felt called to become a deacon. "I prayed about this for two years to make sure this was what I really wanted to do ." After five years of study at the Mundelein Seminary in Libertyville ,  Illinois , he was ordained a deacon . Juanita took  some of the classes with Pablo as a church requirement  to ensure that wives share their husband's  commitment to become a deacon . As part of his  deaconate training, he worked as a volunteer at Kolbe House for two years. " I fell in love then with jail ministry  and knew then I'd want to come back as jail chaplain. "

And so he did, in  2008. At first, it was  difficult for  Pablo to minister face-to-face with  inmates who had been charged with sexually molesting  boys ; he had a problem passing   judgment on  the inmates for the long-term consequences they had inflicted on these  boys.   How Pablo  eventually learned to deal successfully with this challenge came from  the founder and first director of Kolbe House, Father Larry Craig .  The priest  died in 2006 during  Pablo's first week as a volunteer.  " Before he died, he told me I needed to be able to go into jail and see Christ's face in  the inmates I visited. Since then, I've seen the Holy Spirit in the lives of  some of the inmates during chapel services.   It's pretty hard  to explain , but  when you observe certain actions and behaviors of  some inmates,  you sense the presence of Christ and the opportunity they are having  to change their lives. That  makes me happy. "

        What saddens  this deacon " is seeing too many men and women incarcerated and not me being able to do any more  that what I  do. "  It also  saddens him to see so many 19- and 20-year-olds in jail.  When Pablo is depressed  and   senses himself to be in that "dark valley " mentioned in his favorite Holy  Scripture, Psalm 23, he meditates  on that psalm.

   

The Joy of Conversion and the Sorrow of Recidivism

On a hard-snowing evening last   Feb. 14, Pablo drove to the St. James church in Arlington Heights to share his story with 18 teenagers from nearby suburban high schools.  Standing before his youthful audience,  Pablo no  doubt saw that  its profile—i.e.,  faith life, education,   gang-free, drug-dealer- free neighborhoods —contrasted sharply with his  county jail  youths . What Pablo told these 18 suburban teens about life in jail and the neighborhood of his youth was an " eye-opener for a lot of us who came," commented Sr. Faustina Ferko,  one of the event coordinators.  Few , if any of the high school students , knew that the Cook County jail admits annually 100,000 detainees or that its enormity includes  ten divisions , each with its own dispensary, visiting area, law library , chapel, and day room for eating and watching  television.  On a large poster board in the room the teens had written words of encouragement for the deacon  and , in large letters , " We're Praying for You. "

When  questioned about the validity of Christian  conversions in  his  jail and  how many of  those inmates are again imprisoned after their release,  Pablo had a lot to say.   "They have many  questions about a faith they have never practiced or, for many reasons,  have stopped practicing.   But in jail they have had time to pay attention to  their faith , or lack of it ,   and to Holy Scripture. They become more knowledgeable as the months pass.   Oh, yes, I see the  transformations that these men and women have throughout the weeks and months that they are here. " He adds that  maybe  half of the men and women with whom he  seriously  interacts as a deacon "accept Christ as their  Savior" and are converted.  Though Kolbe House does not follow up on released inmates nor contacts their  probation officers , Pablo says many of them begin to regularly attend churches of various denominations , some visiting the  Kolbe House Assumption church.   

Why They Return to Jail:  No Job, No Support

As for recidivism,  he is disheartened by the fact that fifty percent of  all jail inmates will be re-arrested within three years of their release from the Cook County jail  (statistics show it's the same or a bit higher for all inmates throughout Illinois ).  The most common cause of recidivism  in Cook County , he explains,  " is not having a job or a place to live.  " What he said next may come as a surprise to  some:  "Some people  would think that once an inmate is  converted , he or she would not  do something  they knowingly would have them re-arrested . "The reality is that ,  if month after month  you cannot find a job because of your background and no one else is helping you, what are  you going to do ? That's our biggest job at Kolbe House, trying to find jobs for these former inmates. And when they do find a job, more than likely it's at minimum wage.  And many times they cannot go back to their families  for support  because the family is  scared  , especially if  their ex felon  family  member  had a drug addiction or was a drug dealer,  then they wonder if her or she has truly changed  despite their conversion. Spouses who  don't want a parolee  living with them, move on, too . So, if after months  of having  no job or they can't find housing,  you ask, how are they going to survive?  The whole approach of the justice system has to change . That whole mentality of warehousing the people is not the answer. We  have to work with what that person's problem really is, the root cause , which we  don't pay attention to. " 

I pressed Pablo with the question : But wouldn't  their  new Christian faith  now enable them to resist  destructive temptations ?    " But with faith, " the deacon replied, " you need some action, someone to give you an opportunity. And that's the problem : people don't want to take a chance with these  ex-inmates.  We Christians are supposed to be their brothers and sisters,  but we don't act like that. " 

            What Byron Johnson wrote in  his  American Outlook magazine article   ("Jailhouse Religion, Spiritual Transformation, and Long Term Change"  )   echoes today with Pablo's concerns .

Unless other faith-based- ministries on the outside of prisons are willing to do more to intentionally work with ex-prisoners, new converts would have a hard time making it in the free world. In essence, my position was that a conversion experience is really only the first step in a 
much longer journey. Spiritual transformation is an ongoing process that cannot be averted once an inmate leaves prison….. Just because an inmate  makes a profession of faith in prison does not change the fact that he or she will struggle to find stable employment, acceptable housing, adequate transportation, and supportive family members. ….Because reentry is so difficult, the decision to bypass the church is a recipe for disaster—effectively separating former prisoners from the support they would absolutely have to have in order to live a law-abiding and productive life in the free world. Without connections to the church, ex-prisoners will not have a mentor to hold them accountable, and they will not have access to the vibrant networks of social support that exist in so many congregations. 

          Last February ,  Victor B. Dickson, president and CEO of  the Safer  Foundation, and Esther  Franco-Payne, deputy director of the Illinois Justice Project ( both representing the  Justice Coalition for Safety and Fairness ),  stated the following in a guest column of the Arlington Heights  Daily Herald :

The   State Commission  on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform…now  turns its attention to the hard problems of the second prong of overcrowding , the    lengthy sentences that drive prison crowding without delivering any public safety benefit and the recidivism caused by the consequences of having a prison record, which consign people to a life of poverty and — too frequently — committing more crimes. 

The Combat with Temptation

          Does all this societal neglect  ever depress Pablo ? "No," he says. " I just keep on going.    I always  hope that they will change and never have to  go back.  But if they do, we as a church will always be here for them.  We pray for them all the time  and they pray for us .Many times I've  asked them to pray for me, and they don't hesitate. They are men of strong  faith here but,    when they get out they have a hard time dealing with all those temptations.  , especially those with drug addictions."

                        Then  Pablo's  voice lowers  as if he  were once more facing a disheartening  reality he will face tomorrow and the next day, a reality he himself  once faced : that the human struggle to steadfastly use our God-given  free will to  master  destructive temptations , is a struggle far more intense for people for  whom Pablo prays, for in a tone conveying both resignation and hope,  he says: "But once you're on the street , only the strong will stay strong. " Those who think  they are strong but are weak will fall again. " 

            Ah,  yes—temptation. Fr. Alfred Delp , a Jesuit priest  , wrote this in his journal  shortly before he was hanged in Auschwitz in 1942 for his  steadfast   repudiation  of Nazism :

                       

No one can escape the hour  of temptation. It is only in that hour that

we begin to sense our weakness and to have a  faint inkling of  the

vital decisions we are expected to make. If only I can manage to keep

 a hold on this perilous perch and not faint and let go . I have

committed my soul to God and I rely on the help of friends…In the

darkest hours…patience and faith are needed, not because we believe

 in earth, or in our stars, or our temperament or our good disposition,

but because we have received the message of God's herald angel and

 have our selves encountered him. " …[ from various meditations,

including excerpts from  the books "The People of Advent" and " Even

Unto Death " , edited by Jeanne Kun for World Among Us Press, 

and from  the website living.bulwark@yahoo.com .  ]

          What does Pablo do for   fun or recreation ? Not much, he admits.  " As a deacon, I'm always busy. " He reads a lot of spiritual books, he says, and once on a while sees an "inspirational movie." And then there's  football ( the Bears ) and basketball ( the Bulls ) on television.  He sees his life's milestones as marrying his wife Juanita and  their  raising three children who never joined a gang.  His goal is to do missionary work in a  foreign land , and he would like to be remembered as  a "faithful servant of the Lord. "

                My last question to Pablo was what can people living in secure, upscale communities  learn from what he has shared  in this interview. " Prayer will change people. Pray for these incarcerated men and women, even if you don't know their names. The Lord knows them. "

A favorite hymn from the St. James church where Deacon Pablo Perez recently spoke:

Deep within I will plant my law,

not on stone, but in your heart.

Follow me, I will bring you back, you will

be my own, and I will be your God.

(tune by David Haas, text from  Holy Scripture )  

Deacon Pablo Perez  and, above him , a
portrait of  the martyred  Saint Maximilian Kolbe 

The End

Editor's Note: The author was inspired

to write this article from his experiences

as  a life skills workshop leader at the

Cook County jail, as a volunteer for

the Prison Fellowship organization ,

as  a former police-beat reporter for the

erstwhile Chicago City News Bureau,

and  from a harrowing ten-day

imprisonment in Bratislava,

Czechoslovakia ,  during  the Cold War.

All comments are welcome.

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2016 Robert R. Schwarz

is goalH