US sex offender registry and criminal records: headline figures
Sex offender registry records across 58 US registries, and criminal records across 1,545 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.
1,545
criminal-record jurisdictions: 1,408 county jail rosters, 53 state prison systems, 36 court sources and 34 warrant systems.
Why sex offender rates by state 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, 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. Standard results are not a consumer report; FCRA-covered decisions run through FCRA Partner Access
Sex offender registry size and rate per 100,000 by state
Sorted by registry size. Rates are per 100,000 residents (2020 Census). Download the same data as CSV from the data page.
56 jurisdictions, 872,003 registrants in all; the largest is Texas.
Custom data pulls for journalists and researchers If the cut you need is not on this page, ask. Free 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. 36 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.
How to cite OffenderSearch data
- 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
Free sex offender data downloads for reporters
Two aggregate files are free to download and reuse with attribution: registrants by state and registrants by city, as CSV. They hold the same figures as our sex offender statistics page and contain counts only, never names or addresses of individuals. Find them on the data downloads page.
For a story about one place, the state pages give a starting number: see registry numbers by state, sex offenders per capita and which state has the most sex offenders.
How to request data or a comment
Use the press topic
Write through the contact form with the Press topic, or email support@offendersearch.app with “Press” in the subject.
Put the deadline first
Give the outlet, the story and the hour you file. Deadline requests are answered first.
Say what cut you need
A state, county or city; registry or criminal; a count, a breakdown or a field-level question.
Get it in writing
We send the figure with its date and the caveats that go with it, or tell you plainly that we do not hold it.
What reporters most often get wrong about registry and criminal data
- A registry count is not a crime rate. It reflects who a jurisdiction requires to register and chooses to publish.
- A jail booking is not a conviction. A booking records an arrest and custody; only a court disposition records an outcome.
- A name match is not an identification. Two people can share a name and even a birth year. Our results label what matched for exactly this reason.
- Registry tiers are not comparable across states. Each state defines its own levels and publication rules; see sex offense types.