Texas has the most registered sex offenders of any state, with roughly 76,000 people on its registry as of early 2025. Measured per capita, though, Oregon leads the country at about 688 registrants per 100,000 residents, a rate no other state comes close to. Which answer matters depends on whether you want the biggest raw number or the highest concentration relative to population.
States With the Most Registered Sex Offenders by Total
About 850,000 people are listed on sex offender registries across the United States. The states with the largest totals tend to be the most populous, so a high number doesn’t automatically mean a worse crime problem. As of early 2025, the leaders are:
- Texas: roughly 76,000 registrants
- California: roughly 61,000 registrants
- New York: roughly 43,000 registrants
- Michigan: roughly 41,000 registrants
- Illinois: roughly 34,000 registrants
- Oregon: roughly 34,000 registrants
- Florida: roughly 33,000 registrants
Oregon is the obvious outlier. Its population is under 4.5 million, yet it sits alongside states with five to seven times as many people. That has far more to do with how Oregon’s registration laws work than with crime rates being higher there.
States With the Highest Rates Per Capita
Per capita rates strip out the population advantage and show how concentrated registrants are relative to community size. If you want to know how likely you are to live near someone on the registry, this is the metric to use. Data published by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children puts Oregon in first place at about 688 registrants per 100,000 residents. Arkansas ranks second at roughly 536 per 100,000.
Those numbers dwarf the national average. Even the biggest-registry states fall well below Oregon’s per capita rate because their populations absorb the totals. A state with 33,000 registrants and 4 million residents is a very different place on the ground than one with 76,000 registrants and 30 million residents.
Why Oregon Ranks First Per Capita
Oregon’s top ranking comes down to policy. The state requires registration for more than 25 different offenses, some of which other states don’t treat as registrable at all. Oregon also imposes lifetime registration for certain categories and counts every registrant in its total, even though its public-facing website maps only the highest-risk individuals classified as Level 3 under the state’s risk assessment system. The internal registry is therefore much larger than what the public search tool shows. Advocates have also pointed to comparatively high reporting and prosecution rates as a factor in the fuller registry.
Why State Totals Vary So Widely
The biggest driver of any state’s registry size is what counts as a registrable offense. Some states limit registration to serious violent and sexual crimes against children. Others sweep in offenses like public indecency, consensual conduct between teenagers close in age, or certain prostitution-related charges. When a state defines more crimes as registrable, its numbers grow regardless of whether serious sexual violence is any more common there.
Registration duration matters just as much. Under California’s tiered system, Tier 1 registrants must stay on the registry for at least 10 years, Tier 2 for 20 years, and Tier 3 for either 20 years or a lifetime depending on the basis for classification.1California Department of Justice. California Tiered Sex Offender Registration (Senate Bill 384) For Registrants States that mandate lifetime registration for a broader range of offenses accumulate registrants year after year with very few coming off the rolls. States that allow petitions for removal after a set period keep their totals lower, even if conviction rates are similar.
Retroactivity plays a role too. When a state adds new offenses to its registration requirements and applies the change to people convicted years ago, the registry can spike overnight. Those legislative shifts make year-over-year comparisons tricky and explain why some states see sudden jumps that have nothing to do with new crimes.
The Federal Floor
Every state registry sits on top of a federal baseline. The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, or SORNA, was enacted as part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 and sets minimum standards every jurisdiction is supposed to meet.2Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act SORNA groups offenses into three tiers: Tier I carries a 15-year minimum registration period, Tier II carries 25 years, and Tier III carries lifetime registration. States are free to go beyond those minimums and many do, classifying more offenses at higher tiers or extending durations. A state that fails to substantially implement SORNA loses 10 percent of its Byrne Justice Assistance Grant funding,3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 U.S. Code 20927 – Failure of Jurisdiction to Comply but implementation is still uneven, which is part of why state totals look so different.
How to Check Who Is Registered Near You
The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website at NSOPW.gov is the best starting point. It searches registries across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the five principal U.S. territories, and participating tribal jurisdictions in a single query.4The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website. Search Public Sex Offender Registries You can search by name, zip code, city, county, or an address radius of up to three miles.
Results typically show the registrant’s name, age, known aliases, and current address. For deeper information like photographs, conviction details, and physical descriptions, NSOPW links through to the individual state registry where that data lives. How much each state shares publicly varies. Some list every registrant; Oregon, as noted, publishes only its highest-risk Level 3 individuals while maintaining a much larger internal list. Searching NSOPW is free, requires no account, and updates in near-real time as states push new data to the system.