The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services keeps Maryland's sex offender registry and publishes it on the registry website, which it presents as one of the tools families use to find registrants living and working near them, to be told of their movements and to find help with preventing and treating sexual abuse; its front page quotes the Department of Justice estimate from the 2022 National Crime Victimization Survey that 78.6 percent of sexual assaults are never reported, which means many offenders are never convicted or registered, and it warns that no Maryland law enforcement agency ever asks a registrant for money or gift cards to avoid a warrant or come off the registry. The information on the site is what the registrant reported at the last notification, so the department cannot guarantee it and a registrant may have moved without notice, a ZIP Code showing no registrants may simply hold one who never reported, only a fingerprint comparison positively identifies a person, and using the site to injure, harass or commit a crime against anyone named in it brings prosecution. A suspected violation goes to any local police agency, and a registrant known not to live at the listed address is reported to the department or the agency listed on the record.
Three outside services hang off the site: free text messages through Amber Alert when a child is abducted, VINE notifications by email, text or phone on the custody status of anyone incarcerated in Maryland, and phone and email alerts through icrimewatch whenever a convicted sex offender moves into a radius of a quarter mile to five miles around a home. The department's Sex Offender Registry Unit sits in the Criminal Justice Information System central repository at P.O. Box 5743, Pikesville, MD 21282, with a main number of 410-585-3600 and a fax of 410-653-5690, and the local law enforcement unit that registers an offender in each county is on the Maryland county pages.
- Search: the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services registry website, where every registration statement is public, plus copies of statements or of the whole registry by ZIP Code or county on written request.
- Tiers: Tier I registers for 15 years and Tier II for 25, in person every six months; Tier III registers for life, in person every three months; two Tier I convictions make Tier II and two Tier II convictions, or a Tier I and a Tier II, make Tier III.
- Deadlines: register before release from a correctional facility or within three days of community supervision, report every change of address, job, phone, identifier or vehicle within three days, and register weekly in every county of residence when homeless.
- Residence: Maryland sets no residency restriction, by the department's own account, but a registrant may not knowingly enter school property or a registered child care home or institution.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Maryland's own systems: the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services sex offender registry website, the department's sex offender registry frequently asked questions, the department's Sex Offender Advisory Board page, the Sex Offender Advisory Board meeting notice, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
What a Maryland registration statement shows
A public registration statement carries the registrant's name, address and age, a photograph, the place of employment or school and any enrollment or employment at a Maryland institution of higher education, the registration category of Tier I, II or III and the term of 15 years, 25 years or life, whether the person is a Maryland resident or a nonresident student or worker, a legal description and a plain language description of the crime or crimes, the dates of conviction, aliases, the make, model, color and plate of vehicles, and the state, federal, military or tribal court where the person was convicted and sentenced.
The department's questions page lists the four reasons a name comes off: death, reported by a local law enforcement unit, a supervising authority or another official source; relocation out of state, after which the new state's central registry is told; expiration of the registration term; and a pardon, an expungement or an overturned conviction.
The three tiers: 15 years, 25 years or life
A person registers after a conviction, which Maryland defines as a guilty finding by a jury or judicial officer, a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, a probation before judgment where the court orders registration as a condition, or a finding of not criminally responsible, and the term follows the crime, the age of the victim and the date of the offense. Tier I, for 15 years, holds a fourth degree sex offense, visual surveillance with prurient intent, possession of child pornography and the federal crimes of illicit conduct abroad, travel with intent to engage in it, misleading domain names or images, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, transmitting information about a minor and failing to file a statement about an alien.
Tier II, for 25 years, holds abduction of a child under 16 for prostitution, distribution of child pornography, hiring a minor for a prohibited purpose, keeping a house of prostitution, human trafficking, sale of a minor, sexual conduct between a correctional or juvenile services employee and a confined person, the statutory third degree sex offenses under 3-307(a)(4) and (5) and sexual solicitation of a minor, and a registrant with two Tier I convictions lands here.
Tier III, for life, holds assault with intent to rape or sexually abuse, kidnapping or abduction of a child under 12, a continuing course of conduct with a child, false imprisonment of a minor, forcible sodomy, incest, kidnapping, murder with intent to rape or sexually abuse a minor, first and second degree rape and their attempts, sexual abuse of a minor, sale of a minor, first, second and third degree sex offenses involving force, an incapacitated victim or the third subsection, the correctional employee offense, forcible unnatural or perverted practice and the attempted first and second degree sex offenses, and a registrant with two Tier II convictions or a Tier I and a Tier II lands here.
A conviction elsewhere for a Tier I, II or III offense counts the same way. The law in force since October 1, 2010 reaches everyone who was registered on September 30, 2010, everyone under custody or supervision on October 1, 2010 with an unregistered sex offense conviction, and everyone convicted of any new crime since then with such a conviction in the past; a nonresident working or studying in Maryland registers for the term of the tier or until the job or enrollment ends, whichever comes first.
Registering: before release, three days, every six or three months
Registration happens with a supervising authority or the designated local law enforcement unit: before release from a correctional facility, within three days of release to community supervision by a court, and within three days of ending permanent residency in Maryland. The supervising authorities are the Division of Parole and Probation for people under its supervision and for new residents and nonresidents, the Patuxent Institution and the Division of Correction for state prisoners, the courts for people given probation before or after judgment, a suspended sentence or a sentence without incarceration, the local and regional detention centers for local prisoners and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for its patients, and release means any release from their custody, parole, mandatory supervision, work release or any non emergency leave included, but never an escape.
From then on Tier I and Tier II registrants appear in person every six months and Tier III registrants every three months, and every registrant updates the statement within three days of a change of residence, of employment or of anything else on it. A registrant who knowingly fails to register, to give notice of a change of address or of enrollment or employment at a Maryland college, or who gives false information, commits a misdemeanor punishable by up to three years in prison, a fine of up to $5,000 or both under Criminal Procedure Article section 11-721; a registrant who moves without telling the department or the local unit faces an arrest warrant, and the registry unit may call in the United States Marshals when it believes the person fled the state.
The registrant's standing duties
Each registrant signs a Notice of Responsibilities at every registration. The duties: register every address and physical location where the person habitually lives with the primary registration agency and tell the local unit in each such county; register in person once a week in each county of residence when homeless; report within three days every change in residence, employment, telephone numbers, internet identifiers or vehicles to each local unit where the person lives; three days before a permanent move to another jurisdiction or a foreign country, give the primary agency the new address with copies of passports, tickets and itineraries, and register in the new place; for a temporary change of residence of five or more days, or an absence of more than seven days for business or pleasure, notify each local unit in writing with the temporary addresses and the dates, with travel documents available on request; register in the new jurisdiction on starting a job or school there while living in Maryland; tell the local unit where a Maryland college sits, in person, within three days of starting or ending enrollment or employment there; send written notice of any new email address, login, screen name, instant message or chat identity to the state registry within three days; and send written notice of a court ordered name change within three days to each local unit.
Moving in, nonresidents and moving out
Anyone who moves to Maryland while obliged to register in another state, or after a conviction that would be a registerable crime in Maryland, registers within three days of establishing a temporary or permanent residence or of applying for a Maryland driver license, whichever comes first. A resident of another state who must register there and who comes to Maryland to work or attend school registers within three days of starting, where employment means paid, volunteer or government or educational benefit work, full or part time, for more than 14 consecutive days or more than 30 days in a calendar year, and school means any public or private institution from secondary school to trade school and college.
On a move out of state the registrant notifies the department in writing within three days and the registry unit tells the new state, or the designated federal unit for a federal, military or tribal conviction.
No residence limits, but no school property
Maryland has no residency restriction, and the department explains why on its questions page: most sexual crimes are committed by someone the victim knows, two thirds of rapes by an acquaintance, partner or relative according to the 2005 federal victimization study it cites, and states that tried distance rules found they pushed registrants into homelessness, where they are harder to register, harder to track and easier to hide, so a registrant with a valid address is one the police, the registry and the neighbors can watch.
The one place rule is a ban on knowingly entering real property used for public or nonpublic elementary or secondary education, or property holding a registered child care home or child care institution, a misdemeanor carrying up to five years, a $5,000 fine or both.
Alerts, copies and the advisory board
Any member of the public may obtain a copy of a registrant's statement with the photograph but without fingerprints, Social Security number, victim information or anything else the law withholds; the victim, or the parent or guardian of a minor victim, is notified automatically, a local law enforcement unit must send a statement to anyone who asks in writing, and the department will send a statement or a copy of the central registry, in whole or by ZIP Code or county, on a written request to the Sex Offender Registry Unit in Pikesville.
The Sexual Offender Advisory Board, created within the department in June 2006 and made a separate unit in June 2010, reviews Maryland's and other states' sex offender laws and the supervision practices of the Parole Commission and Community Supervision, evaluates tracking technology, sets and certifies treatment standards, works with the department on criteria to measure the risk of reoffending and considers interstate cooperation; eight of its 17 members are appointed by the Governor to four year terms and nine serve ex officio, and its meeting notice listed hybrid sessions from 1 to 2 p.m. on June 25, September 24 and December 10, 2026, in person at 6776 Reisterstown Road in Baltimore for authorized attendees.
The registry's own statute is the Criminal Procedure Article, sections 11-701 through 11-721, with the offense definitions in subtitles 3, 5 and 6 of the Criminal Law Article.
Reading a Maryland result
A statement on the website gives the tier and term with the crime in plain language and the court that imposed it, as the registrant last reported it; the absence of a name can mean a term that ran out, a move out of state, a pardon or expungement, or a registrant who never reported, so the local law enforcement unit for the address is the check. Maryland imposes no distance rules, so a registrant may lawfully live next to a school as long as the person never sets foot on its grounds.
Questions about the Maryland sex offender registry
Related Maryland records
Maryland's other public records are covered on this site: the Maryland arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the Maryland inmate search guide for the incarcerated individual locator and the county detention centers, the Maryland court records guide for the judiciary case search, and the Maryland county pages for every sheriff and police department.