New Rules At Cuyahoga County Jail Force Departure Of Catholic Ministry

After spending 21 years working inside the Cuyahoga County jail, Rev. Neil Walters has left his post as jail chaplain and is raising concerns about what that means for the people held there.

Walters started out at the jail celebrating a once-a-week Mass, offering counseling services and handing out religious reading materials. Over the years, the Catholic priest’s work there grew and grew.

“Whatsoever you do for the least, you do for me. And we were a whatsoever ministry. If there was a need, we tried to address it as best we could,” Walters said during a recent interview at St. Malachi Church.

Over time, Walters started bringing books and magazines into the jail. He helped provide hygiene packs, shirts, socks, underwear, coats for those released in the winter. Walters arranged for reading glasses repair and getting messages to families, he would arrange for rides home after release, even help provide notary service for those who needed to get cars out of impound.

“And I think that's what makes the difference,” said Sister Rita Mary Harwood, who founded the Cleveland Catholic Diocese’s prison ministry in 1996. “Not only the thing that you receive, the book or the magazine, but the fact that somebody cared enough to see that it got to a place where it got to you.”

Harwood worked with Walters, who was a county employee during his time at the jail, on programs like the hygiene kits and winter coats. Over the years, in addition to donating supplies, Harwood and Walters had as many as 25 volunteers doing work at the county jail.

Little by little, all those services were curtailed by jail administration.

According to Warden Michelle Henry, some of the new rules, like a pause on Mass, were put in place because of the pandemic. Others, like restrictions on what outsiders like Walters can do at the jail and what items they can bring in, were a result of reforms.

“We can't just let anybody bring boxes of hygiene kits in or books or items like that,” Henry said. “We have to follow the procedures that we have in place to make sure that those items are screened prior to them coming in and prior to use issuing them.”

Henry, who took over the jail in August, said the changes were necessary after the previous jail administrator, Ken Mills, and warden, Eric Ivey, were arrested for mistreating detainees and mismanaging the facility. The combination of a series of deaths in 2018 and 2019, corrections-officer misconduct cases and the 2019 U.S. Marshals report resulted in an overhaul of jail procedures.

Ron Schueneman estimates he’s spent a total of three years out of the past 15 detained at the Cuyahoga County jail for charges related to a drug habit. His last stint was from September 2019 to March 2020, before the pandemic and before Henry took over. The changes were obvious to him already.

“There were no more books or magazines from the Catholic Church,” Schueneman said. “There were no more envelopes to be given out to write home. They used to provide bus passes to people getting out of jail to ride a bus home. And those were gone.”

He found himself spending more time in his cell than he was used to, likely because of staffing shortages. All this made life inside so much more difficult than previous stays, he said.

“You're getting punished for a reason, it's not to have a good time,” Schueneman said. “But it's not to be mistreated and treated like a piece of cattle where you're locked in a room all day every day for six months.”

Walters left the jail because the new restrictions made the work much less appealing.

“Now I'm just working a job,” said Walters, describing a feeling that reached its peak about a year ago. “And it's a job where I felt, if I did something for somebody, I had to look over my shoulder and make sure I didn't get caught.”

According to Henry, nothing about Walters’ work performance led to his departure.

“We would never want to say that Father Walters wasn't welcome here nor was it time for him to go,” Henry said. “Our new administration, again, has to focus on accountability. I have to know who's here. Where they're working. What hours they're working.”

According to Henry, the items Walters used to bring in can still reach people in the jail. There are just stricter controls now on how the items can arrive.

But Walters doesn’t see a replacement for the work he was doing coming anytime soon.

“Well, I would like to turn the clock back 20 years,” he said. “We had a lot more freedom. We were able to provide more services. I had one volunteer who would say, ‘Why are we doing all this? The county should be doing it.’ Well, they’re not doing it.”

According to Harwood, Cuyahoga County is the only jail or prison where one of the diocese's ministries had to completely stop work, even during the pandemic.

“When [Walters] left, that’s the end of our ministry in the county jail,” Harwood said. “And I think we have been in the Cuyahoga County Jail since it started over on 22nd St.”

According to Harwood, there have been meetings with the sheriff to find ways to restart the Catholic Church’s programs at the jail. But no definitive plans have been made for a return.