The mother of Riker's Island
 

Nun puts 16 years in the slammer
By John Mooney
Irish American Post New York Bureau

When people hear that Sister Margaret McCabe has been on Riker's Island for the past 16 years, they are not the least bit surprised.

Sister Margaret is a chaplain at one of the country's toughest prisons, located across the river from Manhattan island. The facility is actually a compilation of 11 individual jails. The Holy Union nun works in a V-shaped building of 2,000 inmates, roughly half of whom are ages 16-19. The other 1,000 inmates comprise adult male parole violators and people who will be sent to other prisons.  Each building has chaplains to administer to the Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish religions.

Sister Margaret evoked memories of the nuns I had encountered in parochial school.  No nonsense. Understanding, yet firm. Always instilling a sense of appropriateness and the knowledge that God is at work in the world. Her story reminds me of Rita Moreno's  Sister Peter Marie, a character on HBO's controversial prison drama, OZ.  At a reunion with some former students recently, more than one asked if she had ever seen the program, but she had not because she does not have HBO television.

A former teacher and elementary school principal, Sister Margaret said she has always managed to get along with the kids who get into trouble.  In 1978, she volunteered to be a principal of St. Francis de Sales in Spanish Harlem to see how well she could work with minority children. She learned to work with both kids and parents and after seven years, felt it was time to change.

One fall, she heard that some nuns were going into a women's facility in Manhattan to aid the inmates. She subsequently provided one-to-one career counseling with the women there and soon realized the direction her life was going. The experience prompted her to explore the possibility of working in jail.

But getting into Riker's took some work.  The determined Irish-American woman went to the diocese where the jail is located. It took a couple of months, but on Sept. 9, 1985, Sister Margaret began working at the legendary facility.  "I asked for a floor plan and then wondered 'If I get lost, will anyone find me,'" she recalled.

During the past 16 years, Sister Margaret has never been threatened or harmed and she never closes her door.  She knows that if anyone injured her, the security officers would get the person -- if the inmates didn't get him first.   "I am safer here than in the city of New York because there are so many people who would protect me,"" she confided. "I'm never really afraid of the inmates. I am a symbol of God's love for them.  They know that if I care about them, then God cares about them."

That's not to say she is able to solve all their problems.  Sister Margaret recalled seeing many of them over and over.  Are there people who are just truly bad, she was asked. 

She paused. "Nobody starts off bad.  I think if their upbringing is horrific, their vision of life is skewed," she replied. "I can't say that I have met someone I really felt is evil. Screwed up, yes, but not evil. I find that some people have a distorted vision of life -- 'I'm going to get them first' or 'I steal because I don't have a job.'"

She tells them their thinking is not right and explains that her father, an Irish immigrant, was never without a job because he was willing to do anything.  "In one sense, they want to be told, they want to know about choices. I am called to be the one who cares.  Every day, I tread the fine line of condemning the sin, loving the sinner. I try to convey what Jesus taught."

It was hard to answer whether or not the criminal justice system works, Sister Margaret agreed. "In some instances it does, in some not," she said. "We have seen enough that if you have money, you are not here. If Darryl Strawberry were a poor black kid from Harlem, he would be here. Same goes for Puffy Combs and O.J."

"Do all people belong here?  No. Do they deserve to be killed? No. Execution isn't the ultimate punishment; it lasts just four and a half minutes. The ultimate punishment is living life in jail," she said.

The backgrounds of many inmates at Riker's are varied and often sad.  AIDS has decimated families. Role models are scarce and many kids join gangs because they want to belong to something, she pointed out. 

"One of the saddest kids I came across had a mother who was mentally ill. He smoked weed and went joy riding.  I asked what I could do for him, he told me,  'A hug will do.'  I wanted to cry.  Many of them don't have anyone who touches them with any kindness. I am the mother of the jail in a way."

Surprisingly, Sister Margaret says she has found very few inmates she did not like during her 16 years at Riker's.  What she does dislike is whining.  "I came from the kind of house where we were told, 'If you want something to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about.'  I am like my mother; she was clear in setting boundaries.  I am successful here because I set boundaries."

Sister Margaret believed that people can change and actually do lead "successful lives in prison" because they are given a job and structure to their day. Ironically, prison can offer some kids their first opportunity to do something constructive.  Many former inmates return to crime once they are released, she added.  The longer they are incarcerated, the harder it becomes to live on the outside, the nun said. 

Some former prisoners write to her for a while, but then the letters trickle off.  "In some ways, saving is relative," she said.  "I can't undo in a few weeks what has gone on for 16 to 20 years."

Sister Margaret keeps Fridays and Saturdays for own enjoyment. She crochets, walks, reads spy novels and generally does not associate with anyone who works in jail.  She watches few TV programs, but lists JAG, Murder She Wrote, Providence, 60 Minutes and Dateline  among her favorites. Survivor  has no appeal to her because, she said with a dry wit, "We have our own issues of survival."

This spring, Sister Margaret will be heading to Ireland.  Her Cavan-born father's siblings are dead, but she planned to visit their wives.  Her mother was an American whose parents came from Galway and  Monahan. She died on Easter Sunday morning last year at age 82. Her dad was 85 when he died, so longevity is certainly in her genes.

Sister Margaret described her family as good --  but not overly religious -- Catholics who always give hugs and made her feel loved. She fondly recalled playing piano and singing "Danny Boy," "The Wearing of the Green" and other rebel and drinking songs at parties thrown in the family's three-room apartment.  Because she was a tomboy as a child, her parents were surprised when she announced her intention to join a religious order. 

"Their idea was that sisters were quiet, ladylike," she laughed.  "They had a typical Irish response - it's whatever God wants. To me, it seemed to be the most sustaining thing.   I don't know if they thought it would last for 42-and-a-half years!"