Zachary's Law, effective January 1, 2003, required Indiana's sheriffs' departments to jointly establish the Indiana Sex and Violent Offender Registry so that the public could learn the identity, location and appearance of sex and violent offenders who live, work or study in the state, and on July 1, 2006 the Indiana Department of Correction replaced the Criminal Justice Institute as the agency that oversees registration and the registry, giving judges, police, prosecutors, parole and probation officers and community corrections officials the training and information they need on Indiana Code 11-8-8 and on the registry's use. The Department's registry hub links the registry, which searches by county, and on request the Department gives neighborhood associations information about the sex offenders living near them and instructions for using the site; its registry office sits at 302 West Washington Street, Indiana Government Center South, room E329, Indianapolis, IN 46204, at (317) 232-1232 and by fax at (317) 234-1953.
In practice the county sheriff is responsible for registering, verifying and monitoring the convicted sex and violent offenders in the county, as the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office explains, and for statewide continuity every sheriff keeps the county registry inside one centralized OffenderWatch database, so a search chooses an Indiana county, takes any local address and returns every registered offender living within a one mile radius inside that county, or finds a particular registrant by name. The Indiana Sheriffs' Association, which answers general questions at (800) 622-4779 from Avon, states the limits plainly: the sheriffs make no representation that everything on the site is accurate, since much of it comes from official records but some from the offenders themselves, who register in each county where they live, work, attend school or own property, and the information may not be used to harass or threaten a registrant or a registrant's family. A question about a particular offender, or a correction, goes to the sheriff of the county where the person lives or should be registered, and every sheriff is on the Indiana county pages.
- Search: the sheriffs' Sex and Violent Offender Registry, by county, by a local address for everyone within a mile, or by name, with a free email alert when an offender registers within a mile of the address you enter.
- Who is listed: people convicted of a sex offense or a violent offense, or adjudicated delinquent for an act that would be one, who live, work, study or own property in Indiana.
- Deadlines: report to the sheriff of the county of residence within three days or seven days of release by classification, report any change of address, school, job, online identifiers or vehicles within 72 hours, and register every seven days when homeless.
- Verification: the sheriff verifies the registration at least once a year or every 90 days by risk classification and mails notice of the duty to appear in person.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Indiana's own systems: the Indiana Department of Correction sex and violent offender registry hub, the Department's make an appeal page, the Indiana registration appeal procedure for non incarcerated registrants, effective October 1, 2013, the Department's general public resources page, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office sex offender registry page, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office sex offenders page, the Indiana Sheriffs' Association registry page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Registering with the sheriff: three days, seven days and the 72 hour rule
The sheriffs state the duties the same way in Jefferson County and in Vanderburgh County. A sex or violent offender reports to the sheriff of the county of residence on release from incarceration within three days, meaning 72 hours, or within seven days, depending on the classification. From then on the registrant has 72 hours to register, with the law enforcement agency that holds the registration, any change of principal address, education or job, any email address, instant messaging or chat room name or social networking site the person uses or intends to use, any vehicle used or intended to be used, and any other information the agency requires, and must also register every physical identifier, aliases, tattoos, scars and piercings included, and report any change of name.
The forms are submitted in person, and the Jefferson County Sheriff describes what happens next: the office enters the information into the Indiana registry, the National Crime Information Center, the Indiana Data and Communications System and its own records system and stores the signed form securely. The principal address is wherever the registrant spends the most time, whether the registrant or someone else owns or leases it, and any falsification or omission is a violation of the registration law.
Annual or 90 day verification, and the homeless rule
The sheriff must verify the registered information at least once a year, or every 90 days, according to the registrant's risk classification, and must mail the registrant a notice of the duty to report in person and register either annually or every 90 days on the same basis. A registrant who is homeless or claims to live in temporary or transitional housing registers every seven days. The Indiana Sheriffs' Association sums up the mandates as annual registration with law enforcement and a registry meant to increase community safety and awareness rather than to invite action against anyone, and points readers to Indiana Code chapters 11-8-8, 35-38-1-7.5, 35-42-4-10, 35-42-4-11 and 35-42-4-12 for the law itself.
Email alerts within a mile
The registry's free email notification, which the Vanderburgh and Jefferson County sheriffs both promote, alerts a subscriber whenever a sex offender registers with a county sheriff's office at an address in the selected county within one mile of the address on the subscription. Vanderburgh County adds a web portal that lets the public report violations, since without testimony from concerned citizens a registry violation is hard to prosecute, and its community awareness program answers at 812-421-6309.
The Department of Correction's public resources page sits beside the registry with the search for people in the Department's custody and the Indiana SAVIN alert service, which reports prison escapes by telephone or email.
Protests and appeals: how a registrant challenges an entry
Indiana adopted a formal procedure, effective October 1, 2013, for a registrant who is not in the Department's custody to challenge what the registry says. The local law enforcement authority, the chief of police of a consolidated city or the sheriff of any other county, must give the registrant written notice before entering the person into the registry, before changing, adding to or removing public information, and when it refuses a change the registrant asked for, with the full text of what will appear and a notice of the right to protest and appeal.
The registrant protests first to the local authority and then, if necessary, appeals to the Department, must raise every issue at the first opportunity or waive it, and gets a single protest and a single appeal unless circumstances change, as when a court order changes the person's criminal status; a registrant may also raise, in the first protest only, claims about the state of the registry on the day the procedure was adopted, and may escape waiver by showing incompetence, undue influence, deception or minority at the time.
A registrant identified as required to register for life may challenge that identification and assert a ten year period. The appeal page warns about the clock: when a properly filed complaint gets no response from the local official within 30 days, the registrant has seven days after that thirtieth day to ask the Department to review it, and a later request loses every issue in the complaint; a registrant barred from visiting the Department's and the registry's websites may ask the office for a paper copy of the procedure at its ordinary copying charge.
Violent offenders convicted before July 1, 2007
A court judgment reported on the same page holds the violent offender registration law unconstitutionally retroactive under the Indiana Constitution as applied to violent offenders who committed their offenses in Indiana before the law took effect on July 1, 2007, except where registration is a current condition of probation or parole. The Department of Correction was ordered to remove the names and all information of people classified as violent offenders on that basis, unless other convictions keep them classified as sex or violent offenders, automatically where it can tell the offense date and supervision status and otherwise by a notice to the last known address with instructions; the county sheriffs, and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department in Marion County, were ordered to stop imposing registration on that group, and the sheriffs and prosecutors were ordered not to arrest or prosecute them for failing to register as violent offenders unless another offense requires it.
Questions about the judgment go to the Department's Director of Registration and Victim Services at 302 West Washington Street, room E329, or to the plaintiffs' lawyers at the ACLU of Indiana.
Reading an Indiana result
A record on the sheriffs' registry is the county sheriff's record, drawn partly from official sources and partly from the registrant, with the address last verified on the yearly or 90 day cycle and no statement about the likelihood of another offense; a name missing from a county search may be registered in another county, may have been removed under the 2007 judgment or may never have belonged there, and the sheriff of the county where the person lives or should be registered is the one who knows.
Questions about the Indiana sex offender registry
Related Indiana records
Indiana's other public records are covered on this site: the Indiana arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the Indiana inmate search guide for the Department of Correction and county jail lookups, the Indiana court records guide for the mycase search, and the Indiana county pages for all 92 sheriffs.