Arkansas Mandated Reporter Laws: Duties, Penalties, and Immunity

Under Arkansas mandated reporter law, if you fall into one of the professions or volunteer roles listed in Arkansas Code 12-18-402, you must call the Child Abuse Hotline immediately when you have reasonable cause to suspect a child is being abused or neglected. The duty is personal, it cannot be routed through your supervisor, and knowingly ignoring it is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.¹²

Who Counts as a Mandated Reporter in Arkansas

Arkansas has one of the longer mandated reporter lists in the country. The statute names more than 30 categories of people, so many workers assume they are covered and are correct.³ The main groups:

Healthcare professionals, including physicians, surgeons, dentists, dental hygienists, osteopaths, licensed nurses, resident interns, mental health professionals and paraprofessionals, and other medical personnel involved in patient care
Full-time and part-time employees of public or private schools, school officials at colleges and universities, and anyone age 21 or older who volunteers at a school
Daycare center workers, foster parents, and childcare workers
Police officers, peace officers, judges, prosecuting attorneys, coroners, and court-appointed special advocate staff or volunteers
Social workers, Department of Human Services employees, and employees of child advocacy or child safety centers
Clergy members, domestic abuse advocates, domestic violence shelter employees and volunteers, attorneys ad litem, and DHS contractors acting within the scope of their work

Clergy are worth calling out. Unlike the state’s adult maltreatment statute, the child maltreatment law contains no clergy-penitent exception. If you are a member of the clergy in Arkansas and you suspect a child is being harmed, you must call the hotline no matter how you learned about it.³

When the Duty Kicks In

The trigger is reasonable cause to suspect maltreatment, or direct observation of a child in conditions that would reasonably lead to maltreatment. You do not need to confirm what happened, decide which category of abuse or neglect it fits, or gather more evidence. The statute uses the word “immediately.”³

Suspicion is a lower bar than certainty. If you are waiting until you are sure, you have already waited too long.

How to Report

There are three ways to file a report with the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline:

Phone: 1-800-482-5964
Online: mandatedreporter.arkansas.gov
Fax: 1-501-618-8952

Have the child’s name and location ready, along with a description of what you observed or what raised your concern and anything you know about the suspected offender. If you do not have all of it, call anyway. The hotline is staffed to take incomplete reports and start an investigation on what you can provide.

Your Employer Cannot Stop You

This is where mandated reporters most often get into trouble. Many workplaces have internal protocols that push abuse concerns through a supervisor, compliance officer, or legal department first. Arkansas law overrides those policies. An employer or supervisor cannot prohibit you from calling the hotline directly, and cannot require you to get permission or give notice before doing so.⁴

No privilege or contract overrides the duty either. If your professional relationship with a client would normally be confidential, that confidentiality does not excuse you from reporting suspected child maltreatment.⁴

What Happens If You Don’t Report

Arkansas splits the offense in two based on the reporter’s state of mind, and the difference is significant.

Failure to Notify in the First Degree

If you are a mandated reporter, meet the criteria for reporting, and knowingly fail to call the hotline, you have committed failure to notify in the first degree. This is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.¹²

There is one narrow exception. First-degree failure to notify does not apply to a mandated reporter who is personally a victim of domestic abuse, a violent crime, or a sex offense committed by the same person they would otherwise be reporting.¹

Failure to Notify in the Second Degree

Reckless failure, rather than knowing failure, is failure to notify in the second degree. That is a Class C misdemeanor, with a maximum of 30 days in jail.⁵² Recklessness means you were aware of facts that should have prompted a report and consciously disregarded them. The line between knowing and reckless often turns on what the reporter admitted to themselves about the situation.

If you hold a professional license, expect that a conviction under either statute can trigger a separate review by your licensing board, with discipline up to suspension or revocation.

Immunity When You Report in Good Faith

Arkansas protects reporters at two levels. The mandated reporter statute itself grants a good-faith reporter immunity from both civil and criminal liability.³ A broader immunity statute extends the same protection to anyone who reports in good faith, mandated or not, and also covers related actions such as taking photographs of injuries, ordering radiological exams, or placing a child in a 72-hour emergency hold. Schools, daycare facilities, and other publicly supported institutions that cooperate with an investigation in good faith get the same protection.⁶

Good faith is the key phrase. It means you reported based on what you honestly observed or knew. A report that turns out to be unsubstantiated does not, on its own, cost you immunity.

Filing a Knowingly False Report

The flip side of immunity is a separate offense for anyone who purposely files a report containing an allegation they know to be false. A first offense is a Class A misdemeanor. A second or subsequent offense is a Class D felony.⁷ The statute targets deliberate fabrication, not honest mistakes, and the state has to prove the reporter knew the allegation was false when it was made.

A Note on Vulnerable Adults

Everything above concerns child maltreatment. Arkansas maintains a separate reporting framework for abuse, neglect, or exploitation of endangered or impaired adults under a different chapter of the code, with its own list of mandated reporters and its own rules, including a limited clergy exception for confessional communications that the child statute does not contain.⁸ If your concern is about an adult rather than a child, that statute is the one to consult.