The Arkansas Crime Information Center, a division of the Department of Public Safety, keeps the registry, and its sex offender information page lays out the law in a few lines: sex offenders are required to register in Arkansas under the Sex Offender Registration Act of 1997, found at Arkansas Code Annotated 12-12-901 through 12-12-920; anyone convicted of certain sex offenses and offenses against children registers, as does anyone who was incarcerated, on probation or parole or under any other community supervision for a listed offense when the act took effect, anyone acquitted of a listed offense on the grounds of mental disease or defect, and anyone who had to register under the earlier Habitual Child Sex Offender Registration Act; and a sex offender moving to or returning to Arkansas from another jurisdiction registers with the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction within three business days of establishing residency. What sets Arkansas apart is the assessment: every registered sex offender must submit to assessment by the Sex Offender Screening and Risk Assessment Program coordinated by the Arkansas Department of Correction, each offender is assigned a risk level from the results, and an offender who fails to submit is assigned Risk Level 3 by default, the level that puts a person on the public website.
The state portal's search page describes the public tool: the registry is updated as offender addresses and other information are updated at the center, a visitor searches by address, city, county or ZIP code and sees the publishable offenders in a map view around the address entered, or searches by name, and may subscribe to email and phone notifications for as many addresses as desired, to be told whenever an offender moves into a chosen radius; a disclaimer setting out the registration requirements and what the site provides must be accepted before the search opens, and the search itself runs on the Arkansas Sex Offender Notification System. The center sits at 322 South Main Street, Suite 615, Little Rock, AR 72201, answers at 501-682-2222 and toll free at 800-482-5866, and names its sex offender registry manager on the information page for questions about registration; the police department or sheriff that registers offenders in each county is on the Arkansas county pages.
- Search: the Crime Information Center search by address, city, county, ZIP code or name, with a map of the publishable offenders around any address and email and phone alerts for a chosen radius, after the disclaimer is accepted.
- Who appears: Level 3 high risk offenders, Level 4 sexually violent predators and the Level 2 offenders who were 18 or older with a victim of 14 or younger; Level 1 and the rest of Level 2 go only to the local police and sheriff.
- Assessment: every registrant is assessed by the Department of Correction's Sex Offender Screening and Risk Assessment Program and given a level of 1 to 4; refusing the assessment means Level 3 by default.
- Penalty: failing to register, to report a change of address or to comply with the assessment is a Class C felony; an offender arriving from another state registers with local law enforcement within three business days.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Arkansas's own systems: the Arkansas Department of Public Safety sex offender information page, the department's registered sex offenders page with the current counts, the department's public notification page, the department's sex offender offenses page, the Arkansas.gov sex offender registry search page, the Arkansas.gov page for the Arkansas Crime Information Center, the Arkansas Sex Offender Notification System, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The offenses that require registration
The department's offenses page reproduces the list in section 12-12-903 of the Arkansas Code: rape; sexual indecency with a child when a felony; sexual assault in the first, second, third and fourth degrees; incest; engaging children in sexually explicit conduct for use in a visual or print medium; transportation of minors for prohibited sexual conduct; employing or consenting to the use of a child in a sexual performance; pandering or possessing a visual or print medium depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child; producing, directing or promoting a sexual performance by a child; promoting prostitution in the first degree; stalking, and exposing another person to the human immunodeficiency virus, when the sentencing court orders registration; indecent exposure when a felony; kidnapping, first and second degree false imprisonment, and permanent detention or restraint when the victim is a minor and the offender is not the parent; permitting abuse of a minor when the abuse was sexual intercourse, deviate sexual activity or sexual contact; possession or use of child sexual abuse material; computer exploitation of a child; distributing, possessing or viewing matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child; internet stalking of a child; video voyeurism and voyeurism when felonies; any felony homicide whose underlying felony is one of the listed offenses; sexually grooming a child; trafficking of persons under section 5-18-103(a)(4); patronizing a victim of human trafficking; sexual extortion; any attempt, solicitation or conspiracy to commit one of them; a conviction in another state, in federal court, the District of Columbia, a territory, a federally recognized tribe or a military court for a similar offense or one that requires registration there; a conviction under a former Arkansas law substantially equivalent to a listed offense; and a conviction requiring registration under the laws of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand or any other foreign country where an independent judiciary enforced a right to a fair trial in the year of the conviction.
The assessment, and the four levels
The risk level, not the offense alone, decides who the public sees. Every registrant is assessed by the Sex Offender Screening and Risk Assessment Program that the Department of Correction coordinates, and the results place the person at Level 1, low risk, Level 2, moderate risk, Level 3, high risk, or Level 4, sexually violent predator; an offender who fails to submit to the assessment is assigned Level 3 by default. Section 12-12-913(j)(1)(A) required that information on the registrants posing the highest risk to the public, Levels 3 and 4, be available on the state website by January 1, 2004, and the department notes that later changes in the law added public access to Level 2 offenders who were 18 or older at the time of the offense when the victim was 14 or younger, the rule the registered sex offenders page cites as section 12-12-911.
That page states the publication rule in full: the center lists the names and addresses of registered sex offenders who have been assessed by the Department of Correction assessment team, for the purpose of giving the public information about Level 3, Level 4 and certain Level 2 registrants who may live in the area, and provides information on all registered sex offenders, whatever the level, to the local law enforcement agency with jurisdiction where the offender resides, while continuing, in its words, to explore the legal issues of giving the public more.
The numbers: 20,567 registrants on October 7, 2026
The registered sex offenders page counted 20,567 registered sex offenders in Arkansas as of October 7, 2026. By level, 1,081 were at Level 1, of whom 103 were women and 978 men; 8,359 at Level 2, 347 women and 8,012 men; 5,467 at Level 3, 117 women and 5,350 men; and 501 at Level 4, nine women and 492 men; and 5,159 offenders had not yet been assessed. The page also tracks the registry year by year: at the end of 2025 there were 20,246 registrants, of whom 8,894 were compliant, 1,735 delinquent, 4,261 incarcerated, 4,732 living out of state, 134 at an unknown address, 224 deported, 169 incapacitated and 97 outside the United States, against a total of 17,759 in 2021, 18,374 in 2022, 19,041 in 2023 and 19,588 in 2024, the incarcerated count rising from 3,376 to 4,261 over those five years and the out of state count from 3,959 to 4,732.
Searching, and the address alerts
The portal describes a search built around places as much as names: an address, city, county or ZIP code brings up the map view with every publishable offender around it, a name search is offered for a known person, and the notification service lets a subscriber register as many addresses as wanted, a home, a school, a relative's house, each with a radius, and sends an email or phone message when an offender moves into that circle.
The center stresses that the registry is updated as offender addresses and other information are updated in its office, so a move reported to the local police reaches the website only after the center processes it; the disclaimer on the way in sets out the registration requirements and a summary of what the site shows and must be agreed to before any search. The center's agency page describes the body behind it, a state agency dedicated to improving the administration of criminal justice that runs a computerized information system reachable by criminal justice agencies through terminals in more than 200 locations, administers the state's central repository of criminal history records, publishes crime statistics and coordinates crime prevention, with the registry search, the missing persons search and the crime victim notification service among its featured public services.
Public notification by local law enforcement
The public notification page explains that Arkansas law lets law enforcement agencies release information on registered sex offenders to the public for purposes of public safety, that the release may consist of the offender's name and location, and that it will never contain information identifying the victim. The regulations on how and when the release happens were first developed by the Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence, and the responsibility for keeping and amending them now rests with the Sex Offender Assessment Committee inside the Department of Correction, which answers questions about the regulations at 870-850-8429, while questions about registration itself go to the Crime Information Center at 501-682-2222.
Because the website shows only Levels 3 and 4 and the qualifying Level 2 offenders, the local police department or sheriff, which receives every registrant's record from the center, is the place that knows about a Level 1 or an ordinary Level 2 registrant and decides what to release about one under the committee's rules.
Penalties
The information page states the penalty in one sentence: a person who fails to register, who fails to report changes of address or who fails to comply with assessment as required is guilty of a Class C felony. The same three duties appear in the yearly table as the difference between a compliant and a delinquent registrant, 8,894 against 1,735 at the end of 2025, and an offender who declines the assessment is both exposed to the felony and posted online at Level 3.
Reading an Arkansas result
A listing on the center's site means an assessed registrant at Level 3 or Level 4, or a Level 2 registrant who was an adult with a victim of 14 or younger, with the address the local agency last reported; a person absent from the site may be a Level 1 or an ordinary Level 2 registrant known only to the local police and sheriff, one of the 5,159 not yet assessed, or one of the thousands incarcerated or living out of state. The sheriff or police department of the county of residence holds every registrant's record, the Department of Correction holds the assessment, and the center in Little Rock corrects the website.
Questions about the Arkansas sex offender registry
Related Arkansas records
Arkansas's other public records guides on this site are the Arkansas arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the Arkansas inmate search guide for the Department of Corrections and the county jails, the Arkansas background check guide for the State Police criminal history checks, and the Arkansas county pages for every sheriff and police department.