Megan's Law, enacted October 31, 1994 and codified at N.J.S.A. 2C:7-1 and the sections that follow, requires people convicted of certain sex offenses to register with law enforcement and provides community notification scaled to the risk each registrant poses, and the Internet Registry Act of July 23, 2001, at N.J.S.A. 2C:7-12 to 19, requires certain registrants to appear on a Sex Offender Internet Registry the State Police maintains. The New Jersey Courts' December 2024 report on the implementation of Megan's Law, the annual report the state Supreme Court ordered in Doe v. Poritz, lays out the process: the offender registers with the local police or the State Police, the county prosecutor where the registrant will live determines the risk of re-offense on the Registrant Risk Assessment Scale and assigns a tier, the registrant is told the tier, the proposed groups to be notified and whether internet listing is proposed and has 14 days to object, a judge reviews everything at a hearing and enters an order, law enforcement notifies the groups or people the order names, and the registrant goes on the Internet Registry if the judge so orders. The Supreme Court upheld the law on July 25, 1995 while requiring that judicial review, and after E.B. v. Verniero the State must prove the tier, the geographic area and the recipients of notice by clear and convincing evidence.
The State Police keeps the official central registry of everyone required to register, incarcerated registrants included, and acts as the contact point for other states, notifying them when a registrant moves in or out. On November 19, 2024 it reported 14,742 registered persons, with about 25 new registrants entering the registry each month over the previous two years; the courts' own case tracking system held 18,205 registrants, 98 percent of them men, of whom 13,342 had been assigned tiers, and 4,675 people appeared on the Internet Registry. The State Parole Board's offender search page points the public to that Internet Registry at the State Police site under the njsp.njoag.gov address, and the local police department for any New Jersey address is on the New Jersey county pages.
- Search: the Sex Offender Internet Registry the State Police maintains, reached through the State Parole Board's offender search page, lists high risk registrants, most moderate risk ones and the repetitive and compulsive, 4,675 people on November 19, 2024.
- Tiers: the county prosecutor scores the Registrant Risk Assessment Scale, Tier 1 below 37 points for low risk, Tier 2 from 37 to 73 for moderate, Tier 3 from 74 to 111 for high; a judge fixes the final tier after the registrant's objection.
- Notification: Tier 1 reaches only the police likely to encounter the registrant, Tier 2 adds schools, licensed day cares, summer camps and registered community organizations likely to encounter the person, Tier 3 adds the members of the public likely to encounter the registrant.
- Duration: a registrant may apply to the Superior Court to end the duty 15 years after conviction or release, unless convicted of more than one sex offense, of aggravated sexual assault or of sexual assault under 2C:14-2(c)(1).
Written by SearchSystems.net from New Jersey's own systems: the New Jersey Courts report on the implementation of Megan's Law, December 2024, the Attorney General guidelines for the implementation of sex offender registration and community notification laws, revised March 2000, the State Parole Board offender search page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Registering: what the law collects and the third degree crimes
A registrant gives the Social Security number, age, race, sex, date of birth, height, weight, hair and eye color, the address of the legal residence and of any temporary residence, the date and place of employment, the crime or crimes that require registration, and whether the person has routine access to or use of a computer or any other device with internet capability. Failing to register is a crime of the third degree under N.J.S.A. 2C:7-2(a)(3), and so is failing to notify the police of a change of address, employment or school enrollment, failing to report a change in computer or internet access or giving false information about it, knowingly giving a false residence or failing to verify the address; the report counted 9,852 people indicted for failure to register and 7,007 convicted of it as of November 19, 2024.
The Attorney General's guidelines make the prosecutor of the county where the person will live responsible for sending the registration forms to the Division of State Police, which maintains the state registry, enters new registrants, updates the records, feeds the National Sex Offender Registry and sends any registration with an out of state address to that state's registering agency. The law reaches people convicted, adjudicated delinquent or acquitted by reason of insanity of the listed offenses who were released from custody or were on parole or probation on or after October 31, 1994, and people found by a court to be repetitive and compulsive whatever the date; the list begins with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact and kidnapping under 2C:13-1(c)(2) where the conduct was found repetitive and compulsive.
Fifteen years after conviction or release a registrant may apply to the Superior Court to terminate the obligation, except that a person convicted or acquitted by reason of insanity of more than one sex offense, of aggravated sexual assault under 2C:14-2(a) or of sexual assault under 2C:14-2(c)(1) may never apply. The Supreme Court held that bar unconstitutional for juveniles in State ex rel. C.K. in 2018, so a juvenile may apply 15 years after the adjudication by showing by clear and convincing evidence that he has not reoffended and no longer poses a threat, and for a juvenile who offended under the age of 14 the duty ends at 18 if a court finds by the same standard that the person is not likely to threaten the safety of others, under In the Matter of Registrant J.G. from 2001.
The Registrant Risk Assessment Scale and the three tiers
The prosecutor scores the Registrant Risk Assessment Scale, written by the Division of Criminal Justice with prosecutors, corrections staff, the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center and psychologists, first issued in 1995 and revised in June 1998. Its four categories, the seriousness of the offense, the offense history, the registrant's characteristics and the community support available, hold 13 criteria: degree of force, degree of contact, age of the victim, victim selection, number of offenses and victims, duration of the offending, time since the last offense, history of antisocial acts, response to treatment, substance abuse, therapeutic support, residential support and employment or educational stability, each given points.
A total below 37 is Tier 1, low risk, where law enforcement is told of the registrant's presence; 37 to 73 is Tier 2, moderate risk, which generally brings notice to law enforcement, schools and community organizations; 74 to 111 is Tier 3, high risk, which generally adds the members of the public likely to encounter the registrant. Juveniles 18 or under at the time of tiering are scored on the Juvenile Risk Assessment Scale the Attorney General issued in June 2006 after the Supreme Court found the adult scale did not fit offenders under 14, with three categories and 14 criteria including the victim's gender and sex offender specific therapy, where below 10 is Tier 1, 10 to 19 is Tier 2 and 20 to 28 is Tier 3 with the same scope of notice.
The guidelines define a Tier 1 offender as one whose crime, lack of violence, lack of a substantial record and community ties make the risk relatively low, a Tier 2 offender as one relatively likely to reoffend compared with Tier 1, warranting limited notice, and a Tier 3 offender as one at relatively high risk compared with Tier 2, warranting notice to the community likely to encounter him. The agencies holding an inmate give the prosecutor the file at least 90 days before release, and before any Tier 2 or Tier 3 notice goes out the prosecutor or the police visit the address to confirm the person lives, works or studies there.
Notice, objection and the judge's order
After tiering, the prosecutor's office gives the registrant written notice of the tier, the proposed scope of notification and any proposed internet listing, and the registrant has 14 days to object by applying to the designated judge of the county, with assigned counsel available. The judge reviews the papers and, when the registrant asks, hears evidence at a conference or hearing, then determines the final tier, the scope and the internet inclusion on the clear and convincing standard; no notification proceeds without the order.
The report's figures show how the review changes outcomes: of 13,342 tiered registrants, 8,283 were Tier 2 or 3 and 8,075 of them, 97 percent, had been notified; 5,245 Tier 2 and 3 cases were resolved after a conference or hearing, with the prosecutor's tier affirmed in 4,176, 80 percent, and amended in 1,069, among them 895 moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1, 155 from Tier 3 to Tier 2, 18 from Tier 2 up to Tier 3 and one from Tier 3 to Tier 1, while 3,793 cases ended by default when the registrant did not appear, 97 percent of them Tier 2; 25 cases were waiting to be heard statewide.
Every time a registrant moves within or between counties or changes jobs the prosecutor must apply to the court to amend the scope of notification, under In the Matter of Registrant H.M., so one registrant can carry several orders over the years, though the static factors such as the offense itself are not rescored without a clear factual error and the tier changes only with changed circumstances.
Who hears: the scope of notification by tier
The guidelines fix the floor for each tier. A Tier 1 registrant brings notice only to the law enforcement agencies likely to encounter the person. A Tier 2 registrant brings notice, at a minimum, to those agencies and to the community organizations that have registered with the prosecutor's office, the schools, licensed day care centers and summer camps likely to encounter the person, each decided case by case and for an organization without its own building by where it regularly meets, with the staff who supervise children told so they can protect their charges rather than the community at large.
A Tier 3 registrant brings notice as well to the members of the public likely to encounter the person, through methods the guidelines spell out, including parents and guardians at schools in the notification zone, and the workplace and its surroundings may be included at the prosecutor's discretion. Likely to encounter means being at or near a place the registrant visits or can be presumed to visit regularly, the home, the workplace or school and the stores and other sites frequented, with a fair chance of actual contact, so a gas station the person only buys fuel at does not qualify, and the court in Doe v.
Poritz allowed factors beyond geography such as an offender's proclivity for certain places. The notice carries the name, a recent photograph, a physical description, the offense of conviction stated as the Penal Code lists it with only the facts the public needs, which may include the age or gender of past victims but never a victim's name, the home address and any employer or school address, and the vehicle and plate, in two versions: an unredacted notice with everything and a redacted one that omits the street number, unit number and employer's name while keeping the street and block or nearest cross street.
When every past victim was a member of the registrant's immediate family or household and the offending was not predatory, the prosecutor may decide that no school or organization needs notice, while still telling the school a victim attends; when every victim was an adult woman and nothing shows offending against young children, elementary schools and groups supervising young children may be left out. In practice prosecutors asked for notice to schools in 5,831 of the 7,012 default cases and 6,596 of the 7,380 contested ones in the adult database, with day care centers and children's organizations next and summer camps, women's organizations and neighbors far behind.
The Internet Registry: who is on it
Under N.J.S.A. 2C:7-13 every registrant whose risk of re-offense is high, and everyone for whom the court ordered notification under 2C:7-8(c)(3), appears on the Internet Registry. A Tier 1 registrant and a Tier 2 registrant whose scope of notification was set at low risk do not, except that since July 1, 2014 a low or moderate risk registrant whose conduct was found repetitive and compulsive under 2C:47-3 is included, and a federal court order of March 16, 2017 in L.A. v.
Hoffman, retroactive to that date, requires the State to prove that pattern by clear and convincing evidence first. A Tier 2 registrant found to be a moderate risk is generally included, unless the sole sex offense, meaning a single conviction with no more than one victim and one occurrence or a single household in an incest case, was committed as a juvenile, was an incest offense or was an offense where the underage victim consented, and even then the prosecutor may win inclusion by showing by clear and convincing evidence that the risk to the public matches that of other moderate risk offenders; those exceptions never apply to the repetitive and compulsive.
Inclusion waits until the prosecutor has given notice of the right to object and the judge has heard the parties and decided. The Attorney General must strive to keep the Internet Registry accurate and timely under 2C:7-14, the State Police maintains it, and it held 4,675 registrants on November 19, 2024.
The numbers by county
The courts' tracking system, which leaves out registrants who died, registered in custody, transferred, registered out of state, were never registered or whose duty ended, held 13,342 tiered registrants on November 19, 2024: 5,059 Tier 1, 38 percent; 7,753 Tier 2, 58 percent; and 530 Tier 3, 4 percent. Essex County led with 537 Tier 1, 1,148 Tier 2 and 210 Tier 3 registrants, followed by Camden with 428, 948 and 74, Hudson with 373, 924 and 32, Bergen with 328, 666 and 37, Atlantic with 194, 603 and 41 and Middlesex with 444, 441 and 14, while Hunterdon counted 38, 31 and 2 and Morris 150, 38 and 2.
Of the registrants in the system 46 percent were white, 32 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic, and 59 percent were between 22 and 50 years old. The courts' adult disposition database held 14,392 case entries, 7,012 resolved by default and 7,380 after a conference or hearing, and a juvenile database held 242 cases scored on the juvenile scale, 240 of them Tier 2.
Parole, prison and the registry
The State Parole Board's offender search page, updated January 29, 2026 when read, separates the lookups: information about an inmate comes from the Department of Corrections offender search engine, information about a paroled offender from the Parole Board's public information office at SPB-Public-Info-Office@spb.nj.gov, which also takes anonymous tips about a parolee or a parole absconder, records from the board through an Open Public Records Act request form, and information about sex offenders from the Sex Offender Internet Registry at the State Police site.
The two systems answer different questions: the registry says who is listed and at what tier, and the corrections and parole lookups say who is in custody or under supervision.
Reading a New Jersey result
A listing on the Internet Registry means a judge has ordered it, after a prosecutor's tier and a chance to object, for a high risk registrant, most moderate risk ones or a repetitive and compulsive offender; a Tier 1 registrant is known to the police and to no one else, a low risk Tier 2 registrant to the police and the schools and organizations named in the order, and the municipal police department or the county prosecutor's office holds the order that says exactly who was told.
Questions about the New Jersey sex offender registry
Related New Jersey records
New Jersey's other public records are covered on this site: the New Jersey arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the New Jersey inmate search guide for the Department of Corrections offender search and the county jails, the New Jersey court records guide for the judiciary's case search, and the New Jersey county pages for every police department and prosecutor's office.