Eliseo Padrón is a 50-year-old Mexican American man from St. Paul, Minnesota. Padrón told The Appeal he grew up surrounded by gang culture. He spent his early adulthood in and out of prison. 

“Living that lifestyle led to me doing a lot of things that I regret,” Padrón says. He was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 1995. 

After he violated his parole terms by returning late to the halfway house in 2012, the state sentenced Padrón to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), a “treatment” facility operated by the Department of Human Services. The building shares a campus with the Moose Lake prison, complete with sally ports and razor wire. 

Moose Lake is one of two facilities where Minnesota holds people indefinitely, long after their prison sentences have finished, and often for the rest of their lives. Minnesota, along with 19 other states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government, allows for the civil commitment of people convicted of sex offenses after they’ve completed the terms of their incarceration. 

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My first piece published with The Appeal is up now. Sex offense civil commitment is an issue that calls our attention because if some people can be imprisoned for indeterminate amounts of time in order to prevent their future crimes, than we are all subject to the whims of the state. Read the full piece here: https://theappeal.org/sex-offense-civil-commitment/