O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12 makes the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the central location where the state's sexual offender registry data is managed, and the GBI registry page is careful to say what that means: the information comes from other agencies, the sheriffs who register the offenders, so it changes frequently, and the bureau makes every effort at completeness and accuracy while guaranteeing neither. The page links the search site, which opens with conditions of use rooted in the Georgia Open Records Act and the warning that a person missing from Georgia's registry may be registered in another state, a download of the latest registry data as a file, and the bi-monthly report of registrants by county. The registry is updated on a continuous basis, and the bureau answers at (404) 270-8399 from its headquarters at 3121 Panthersville Road in Decatur.
The registry is the sheriffs' work. Under the Code a sexual offender gives the required information to the appropriate official before leaving prison or starting parole, supervised release or probation, registers in person with the sheriff of the county of residence within 72 hours after release, placement on supervision or entry into Georgia, maintains the registration with the sheriff of every county where the person lives or sleeps, renews it in person within 72 hours before each birthday to be photographed and fingerprinted, and updates it within 72 hours of any change; the sheriff forwards everything to the GBI within 72 hours. The level shown on a registry profile comes from a separate body, the Sexual Offender Risk Review Board, which decides how likely a convicted offender is to commit another crime against a minor or a new dangerous sexual offense. Every sheriff's office is on the Georgia county pages.
- Search: the GBI registry site after the conditions of use, a download of the latest registry data file, and a bi-monthly report counting registrants by county.
- The sheriff's 72 hours: register in person within 72 hours of release, supervision or arrival, renew within 72 hours before each birthday with a photograph and fingerprints, and report every change within 72 hours, telling both sheriffs before a move.
- Duration: for life, excluding later periods of incarceration, unless a court grants a petition for release under section 42-1-19.
- Levels: the Sexual Offender Risk Review Board grades registrants Level 1, Level 2 or Sexually Dangerous Predator, with Not Leveled for cases not yet reviewed and Cannot Level for cases outside the legal criteria, and the level appears on the GBI profile.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Georgia's own systems: the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sex offender registry page, the Georgia Sex Offender Registry search site, the registry's offender search page, O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12 as published by the GBI, the GBI bi-monthly registry report by county, the Sexual Offender Risk Review Board home page, the Sexual Offender Risk Review Board risk classification page, the GBI frequently asked questions on criminal history records, the Georgia Felon Search page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The sheriff's 72 hours
Subsection (f) of section 42-1-12 sets every deadline at 72 hours. A sexual offender whose residence is homelessness registers in person with the sheriff of the county where the person sleeps within 72 hours of release or entry and gives the sleeping location, and reports a new sleeping location within 72 hours to the sheriff of the last registration and, if the county changed, to the new one. Anyone else reports a new address to the sheriff of the county of last registration within 72 hours before the change and to the sheriff of the county being moved to within 72 hours before establishing the new address.
The annual renewal falls within the 72 hours before the birthday, in person, with a photograph and fingerprints, except that a resident of a hospice, skilled nursing home or residential health care facility may, with the sheriff's approval, register at any time during the birth month and skip the fingerprints while still being photographed. A nonresident offender who enters Georgia to attend school full time or part time registers whether or not any other jurisdiction requires it.
Each sheriff forwards the registration information to the GBI within 72 hours of receiving it.
Lifetime, and the petition for release
The duty continues for the entire life of the offender, excluding any later period of incarceration, and ends only when a court grants a petition under section 42-1-19, which can release a registrant both from registration and from the residency and employment restrictions the Code imposes. The Code defines a Level I risk assessment classification as a low sex offense risk and a low recidivism risk for future sexual offenses, and a Level II classification as an intermediate risk that takes in every sexual offender who does not meet the criteria either for Level I or for the sexually dangerous predator designation.
The risk levels: Level 1, Level 2 and Sexually Dangerous Predator
The Sexual Offender Risk Review Board performs what Georgia calls risk classification or leveling, deciding how likely a convicted sex offender is to commit another crime against a minor or a new dangerous sexual offense. Level 1 means an average or lower risk of sexually reoffending, typically with few identifiable risk factors such as little non sexual crime and few supervision violations; Level 2 means an above average risk, twice as likely to reoffend as an average offender, with factors such as more than one sex offense, deviant sexual interests, non sexual crimes or probation violations; a Sexually Dangerous Predator has a well above average risk, three to four times the average, with multiple factors such as repeated sex offenses, non sexual violence, a substantial record or repeated supervision violations.
Not Leveled means the board has not reviewed the case yet, and Cannot Level means the case did not meet the legal criteria for classification at the time of review. The board scores standardized risk instruments from the criminal history, police reports, court documents, prison records, supervision records and treatment documentation, and the classification can shape supervision, treatment and public information.
By law the board classifies anyone convicted of a criminal offense against a victim who is a minor or of a dangerous sexual offense as those terms are defined in section 42-1-12, any sexual offender who moves to Georgia from another state and anyone a superior court judge orders it to classify; it does not classify people released from prison or placed on probation before July 1, 1996 who no longer must register, or juveniles prosecuted in juvenile court who need not register, and some older cases, among them adult victim offenses before July 1, 2006 and child victim offenses before that date where the offender was already out of prison, got no automatic classification, so those offenders petition the court for an order.
Cases arrive from the clerks of court and the GBI, a clinical evaluator writes a Risk Assessment Classification Report, and the board members decide the level together at the monthly meeting, held on the second Thursday at 10 a.m., where offenders are identified by case number and the public may watch the live stream without taking part. The board then sends a Notification Letter to the offender, the GBI, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Community Supervision, the sheriff of the county of registration and, where it applies, the sentencing court, and the GBI shows the level on the profile.
A Level 2 or Sexually Dangerous Predator may petition for a reevaluation within 30 days of the letter's date, may ask for a review ten years after the first classification and every five years after that, and an offender or attorney may request an expedited classification of a case not yet a priority; the board sits at 200 Piedmont Avenue SE, Suite 404, West Tower, Atlanta, GA 30334 and answers at (404) 657-2115.
The county numbers and the download
The GBI's bi-monthly report counts registrants county by county, and when read it listed 1,093 in DeKalb County, 583 in Chatham, 570 in Clayton, 456 in Bibb, 437 in Cobb, 301 in Troup, 274 in Baldwin and 226 each in Bartow and Whitfield, down to 8 in Webster County. The same page offers the whole registry as a downloadable file, so an employer or a researcher can work from the data rather than one search at a time, within the conditions of use.
The criminal record behind a listing
A registry profile shows the registrable conviction; the rest of a person's Georgia record comes through the Georgia Crime Information Center. Under O.C.G.A. § 35-3-34(d.2) felony conviction records are public without the subject's consent on a full name, race, sex and date of birth, from a sheriff's office or police department or through the Georgia Felon Search, a self service site that charges $15 per search by credit card, even for no record found, returns name based possible matches that only a fingerprint comparison can confirm and leaves out sealed, expunged, juvenile and misdemeanor records.
A full record with another person's signed consent, or one's own record, comes from most sheriffs and police departments, the GBI's criminal history questions page explains, while employers and licensing agencies run fingerprint based checks through the Georgia Applicant Processing Service with results in 24 to 48 hours, and the center's own lobby in Decatur handles record inspections and restrictions by appointment at 404-244-2639.
Reading a Georgia result
A profile on the GBI site is a sheriff's record with a board's grade: the conviction, the address and photograph renewed each birthday, and a level that measures the likelihood of another offense rather than the crime itself, with Not Leveled meaning only that the board has not got to the case. Registration is for life unless a court has ordered a release, and the sheriff of the county of residence answers everything about a particular registrant, including the exact dates of the next renewal.
Questions about the Georgia sex offender registry
Related Georgia records
Georgia's other records have their own guides here: the Georgia arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the Georgia inmate search guide for the Department of Corrections and county jail lookups, the Georgia background check guide for the felon search and fingerprint checks, and the Georgia county pages for every sheriff.