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Margaret Armstrong is the chaplain at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut, Ohio, where she manages faith-based services for inmates. She is frequently asked to provide religious materials to inmates and give them passes to attend religious services. But her job requires her to weed out those trying to game the system for extra free time.

(Cleveland.com/marknaymik)

CONNEAUT, Ohio -- Margaret Armstrong knows when someone is trying to con her.

The 68-year-old chaplain at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, the privately run state prison for men in Ashtabula County, gets tested all the time.

When an inmate playing in the yard asks her for a pass to attend a religious service at a later time, Armstrong will smile and ask, "What are you doing now?"

The inmate knows where this is headed.

"In your free time you play ball, but when confined in your dorm, you want to come to chapel. No." Armstrong will finish.

Inmates eating ham sandwiches while professing a desire to attend Jewish services on Hanukkah will not get very far, either. And when an inmate insists his family is Jewish, he better expect Armstrong will call the family to check.

"Inmates think I'm a sweet old lady and they can con me," she said.

I spent a few hours last week with Armstrong inside the prison, which is owned and run by the Corrections Corporation of America, to learn more about prison ministry and faith-based programs that state corrections officials believe are important to helping lower the system's recidivism rate. I've always been a bit skeptical they help. Ohio's rate is 29 percent, well below the national average of 43 percent.

"Recidivism rates drop for inmates who keep connected to religion when they leave," Armstrong said.

Armstrong knows inmates sometimes tear pages from a Bible to use as cigarette paper. She knows to lock up music equipment used by the chapel band because the chords and strings can be stripped and used as needles to make tattoos. And she knows you can't judge religious books by their covers, even those about Muslim history. She once received a box addressed to her containing several such books that had tobacco and a cell phone hidden inside the carved-out pages.

But if Armstrong detects an inmate's sincerity or emotional pain, she will do everything to introduce him to a faith or foster an existing one. Or she will just be there to listen.

"I try to focus on the ones who are doing the work to change," she said.

The trained social worker and counselor, who attended divinity school later in life, is a powerful advocate for some inmates. When one inmate's young son died, she got the funeral home to video record the memorial service. She then arranged for the inmate, who lacked prison privileges to attend the services in person, to watch the recording alone in the chapel.

Armstrong grew up in Venezuela, where her father, a New York native, oversaw oil refinery construction.

She went to college in the United States, where she met her husband, and moved around a lot to accommodate his work as a government contractor. She credits her travels with giving her perspective on people. Her work as a volunteer with prison ministries sparked her calling to be a prison chaplain. When her two children were older, she attended Ashland Theological Seminary, where she took several classes under Rev. Marvin McMickle, the former pastor at Antioch Baptist Church.

Armstrong has been at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution for four years. She typically arrives at the prison well before 8 a.m. She is responsible for organizing religious services for inmates, whose faiths include Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan and Native American. She recruits priests and ministers and other volunteers to come to the prison to conduct services. She leads a non-denominational service, which includes an inmate band, once a week.

Her daily routine includes notifying inmates about deaths in their families, delivering requested religious materials and talking to inmates in the chapel, which is housed in a building with the basketball gym, exercise room and art room. One issue often raised by inmates is their troubled marriages.

"They come in and talk and talk and talk," she said. "Others are just testing me out."

The average stay at this medium security prison is 39 months, though some inmates are lifers. Their crimes range from drug and sex offenses to murder. But the inmates here have been deemed non-violent by the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Those who don't behave are sent to the prison's segregation wing or transferred to more secure facilities.

More than 1,500 inmates sleep in large open rooms that resemble military barracks. They dress in blue and gray uniforms and hooded sweatshirts. (Those that have tested positive for drug use behind bars have to wear canary yellow uniforms, which make them easier to watch. The prison has had trouble in the past with drug use and violence.)

Armstrong is easy to spot on the prison's sprawling campus by her beige coat and fur cap and the large set of keys hanging around her neck. She looks like a church lady.

She regularly draws about 70 inmates to her service and works with between 200 and 300 inmates a year.

Some inmates don't like her. They either don't respect what she represents or they are mad she denied them a pass or materials.

"I think I'm respected to a certain point," she said. "Some will have my back."

One inmate that sings her praises is Ernest Phillips of Cleveland. This 36-year-old is nearing the end of a 16-month sentence for domestic violence and plays the keyboards in the chapel band.

"She's like a mother figure," he said. "She is easy to talk to. If it wasn't for this [chapel], I'd be in trouble."

Inmates such as Phillips reinforce Armstrong's belief that she and faith-based prison programs matter.

"I can't work miracles," she said. "But God does."