Press & data desk
We hold registry and criminal-records data for every US state, and we will run a custom pull for a reporter on deadline at no charge. Everything on this page is free to cite with attribution.
On deadline? Say so in the first line and give us the hour — we answer those first.
Over three million records
Sex offender registry records across 58 US registries, and criminal records across 1,491 county, state and federal jurisdictions. Free to cite with attribution.
3M+
records across both datasets — the US sex offender registries and the criminal-records corpus, searchable together.
58
US sex offender registries — the 50 states, DC, the territories and the tribal registries — continuously updated.
1,491
criminal-record jurisdictions: 1,375 county jail rosters, 53 state prison systems, 24 court sources and 28 warrant systems.
Why these rates are not a league table
Registry size differs mostly because registries differ, not because populations do. Each jurisdiction decides who must register, for how long, and which registrants appear on the public registry — some publish every tier, others only their highest-risk levels. Montana and Minnesota differ by more than twenty-fold in the table below, and that gap is a statutory and publishing difference, not a difference in offending.
- A rate here is registry size against 2020 Census population — a scale comparison, never a measure of offending or of public safety
- Counts are what each registry publishes, not what any state’s internal system holds
- Registries add, remove and reclassify continuously; a figure is a snapshot and we will date it for you on request
- This is public-record data. It is not a consumer report and must not be used for FCRA-covered decisions
Registry size and rate, by jurisdiction
Sorted by registry size. Rates are per 100,000 residents (2020 Census). Download the same data as CSV from the data page.
What we will run for you
If the cut you need is not on this page, ask. These are the requests we can answer from data we already hold, at no charge, for editorial use.
Geography
Registry counts by state, county or city — we hold city-level figures for hundreds of US cities and county-level for hundreds of counties. Useful for a local story that needs its own number rather than a national one.
Criminal-records coverage
Which states publish a statewide prison system, court records or a warrant system — and which publish none. 22 of 52 publish a statewide court source, which is a public-access story in itself.
What registries publish
Field-level detail on what each registry does and does not make public — photographs, addresses, offense detail, identifiers. See the registry identity gap for a worked example.
Background and context
On-record explanation of how US registry and criminal-records publishing actually works — what a jail booking proves, what a disposition proves, and why the two are constantly confused. Attributable, or on background.
Citation and terms
- Free to cite and reproduce with attribution to Offendersearch and a link to the page the figure came from
- Charts and tables may be redrawn; we ask only that the caveats above travel with the number
- We will confirm any figure in writing before you publish, and tell you plainly when we do not hold something
- Corrections: if we get something wrong, write to support@offendersearch.app and we will correct it and say so