Ohio's sex offender law is Chapter 2950 of the Revised Code, and the sheriff is where it happens: an offender registers in person with the sheriff of the county where he lives, works or attends school, and the sheriff forwards the signed form, the photograph and the prints to the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. Since January 1, 2004 the Attorney General has been required by section 2950.13 to run, through the bureau, a public internet database of every offender registered in any Ohio county, searchable by name, county, ZIP Code and school district and carrying a direct link to the website of each sheriff who publishes a county database; the state registry behind it, with fingerprints, DNA and the full offense history, is closed to the public. County sheriffs describe the system as e-SORN, the Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification System, and the Franklin County Sheriff's page on it traces the current tier system to Senate Bill 5 of July 31, 2003 and to the Adam Walsh Act, which Ohio enacted in 2008 when it repealed its Megan's Law; every convicted sex offender has been subject to registration since January 1997.
The tiers depend solely on the crime of conviction, not on an assessment of the person. Tier I verifies once a year for 15 years with no neighborhood notification, Tier II every 180 days for 25 years with no notification, and Tier III every 90 days for life with written notice to everyone living within 1,000 feet. A Tier III juvenile reaches the public website only if the juvenile court orders the child treated as public registry qualified, and the court also decides whether community notification follows. The Franklin County unit at 55 East Main Street in Columbus, reachable at 614-525-5272 on Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., takes changes of residence and employment in person and changes of telephone, vehicle, email and internet identifiers through its OffenderWatch express check in, all within three days; the sheriff for every other county is on the Ohio county pages.
- Search: the Attorney General's internet database, searchable by name, county, ZIP Code and school district, links to each sheriff's county database; the state registry itself is not public.
- Tiers: Tier I verifies yearly for 15 years, Tier II every 180 days for 25 years, Tier III every 90 days for life; the class follows the crime of conviction.
- Notice: the sheriff gives written notice of a Tier III registrant to every home within 1,000 feet, to neighbors on the same hallway, to building managers, the children services agency, school superintendents and preschools.
- Deadlines: register in person within three days of arriving in a county of residence, in the county of employment after three days or 14 days in a year, and immediately in a county where the registrant attends school.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Ohio's own systems: Ohio Revised Code section 2950.13 on the state registry and the Attorney General's internet database, Ohio Revised Code section 2950.04 on the duty to register, Ohio Revised Code section 2950.06 on periodic verification, Ohio Revised Code section 2950.07 on the duration of the duty, Ohio Revised Code section 2950.11 on community notification, the Franklin County Sheriff's page on e-SORN and offender classification, the Franklin County Sheriff's Offender Compliance Unit page, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction offender search, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
What the Attorney General's database shows and hides
Section 2950.13 fixes the floor for every offender and every public registry qualified juvenile on the internet database: the citation and name of each sexually oriented or child victim oriented offense that created the duty with the date it was committed, the text of those offenses as they stood at conviction or a link to it, a statement of whether the person is a Tier I, Tier II or Tier III offender, the community supervision status including any community control sanction or supervised release, the address of the school, college or place of employment given on the registration form, the vehicle information collected at registration, a chart of which offenses fall in each tier, the notice information the sheriff gives neighbors, any outstanding arrest warrants and whether the person is in compliance with the chapter.
The database may never carry the identity of a victim, a Social Security number, the name of a school or college the person attends, the name of an employer or the state and federal tracking numbers, and it must be searchable by the registrant's name, by county, by ZIP Code and by school district, with a direct link to each sheriff's own online database. The database is a public record under section 149.43; the separate database the bureau runs for local police, with residence, employer, vehicle, victim preference and release dates, is closed, and knowingly getting into it or showing its contents to anyone else is an offense.
The bureau also runs an immediate electronic notice to every other state where a registrant must register whenever an Ohio address is registered or changed.
The three tiers and the verification calendar
Under section 2950.06 a Tier I offender verifies the residence, school and employment addresses on each anniversary of the initial registration, a Tier II offender every 180 days after it and a Tier III offender every 90 days after it, whatever the date of the crime, by appearing in person before the sheriff with whom the address was last registered no earlier than ten days before the due date and no later than the date itself, and signing the verification form the bureau prescribes; the sheriff may mail a nonforwardable reminder but the personal appearance is required either way.
A registrant who misses the date gets a written warning from the sheriff the next day giving seven days to appear, and only when those seven days pass without a visit does the sheriff notify the bureau, seek a warrant and arrest, with the failure charged as a felony. Under section 2950.07 the duty runs 15 years for Tier I, 25 years for Tier II and life for Tier III, with a shorter ten and twenty year period for delinquent children in the first two tiers, and a violation of the registration, change of address or verification sections extends the Tier I and Tier II periods; the clock stops for any later confinement in a secure facility or prison and resumes on release, and an offender convicted in another state, in federal, military or tribal court or abroad may apply to the sheriff for credit for the time already registered elsewhere.
The Franklin County Sheriff lists the offenses in each tier. Tier I holds importuning, voyeurism, sexual imposition, gross sexual imposition under divisions (A)(1) through (3) and (5), unlawful sexual conduct with a minor where the offender is less than four years older and has no prior, illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material under (A)(3), pandering obscenity, and child enticement, menacing by stalking and unlawful restraint when committed with a sexual motivation.
Tier II holds compelling prostitution, pandering obscenity or sexually oriented material involving a minor, illegal use of a minor under (A)(1) and (2), unlawful sexual conduct with a minor where the offender is at least four years older or has a prior, gross sexual imposition on a victim under 13, child endangering under 2919.22(B)(5), kidnapping with a sexual motivation, kidnapping of a victim over 18, abduction with a sexual motivation, and any sexual offense committed after a Tier I classification.
Tier III holds rape, sexual battery, and aggravated murder or murder with a sexual motivation, among others, and each tier includes attempts, complicity and conspiracy.
Registering with the sheriff: three days, employment and school
Under section 2950.04 an offender sentenced on or after January 1, 2008 to prison or any other confinement registers with the sheriff of the county of conviction immediately after the sentencing hearing, before being transferred, with an officer present at the hearing to take the offender to the sheriff. Otherwise the offender registers in person with the sheriff within three days of coming into a county to live or to stay for more than three days, immediately on coming into a county to attend a school or college full time or part time, and with the sheriff of the county of employment once employed there for more than three days or for 14 or more days in a calendar year, the same rule applying to an out of state resident who works in Ohio; an Ohioan who takes work or school in another state registers there at once.
A person convicted in another state, in federal, military or tribal court or in another country registers within three days of moving into an Ohio county or staying more than three days. The sheriff forwards the form, photograph and other material to the bureau and, when a school or employer address is registered, tells the police agency with jurisdiction over that premises. The Franklin County page adds the practical rules: every change of address, employment, education schedule, vehicle, telephone, volunteer work or internet identifier is reported within three days, registrants report all vehicles registered to them and every email and internet address they can reach, employment is unrestricted unless parole or probation says otherwise, and the sheriff may collect a $25 fee per registration up to $25 a year for Tier I, $50 for Tier II and $100 for Tier III.
Neighbor notification within a thousand feet
Section 2950.11 makes the sheriff give written notice about an offender or delinquent child in the notification category, the Tier III class in the Franklin County description, to the occupant of every residential unit within 1,000 feet of the registrant's premises that is not in a multi unit building, to every occupant of a multi unit building whose entrance door is on the same floor and opens into the same hallway as the registrant's, to the building manager of every multi unit building within 1,000 feet including the registrant's own, to the executive director of the public children services agency, to the superintendent of every school district with schools in the notification area and to the principal of the school a delinquent child attends, to the hiring officer of every chartered nonpublic school in the area, and to the head of every preschool program in it, all within the county the sheriff serves; the sheriff may send the same notice again whenever the registrant verifies an address.
Franklin County mails its Tier III notices to a radius of 1,250 feet from the registrant's address unless a court has stayed notification.
Where a registrant may not live
No registrant may live within 1,000 feet, a fifth of a mile, of a school or a day care center, a limit measured by when the crime was committed: a crime before July 31, 2003 is exempt from the school rule and a crime before July 1, 2007 is exempt from the day care and preschool rule, so an older conviction carries no residence restriction at all. Sheriffs apply the limit at registration and any supervision conditions set by a parole or probation officer come on top of it.
The prison and parole lookup
The registry answers only who is registered; the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction offender search answers who is in an Ohio prison, under department supervision or judicially released. It runs by last name alone or with a first name, where a search for Brown returns Browning and Browner as well, by county of commitment, which is the sentencing county rather than the home county, by residential county or ZIP Code for people under Adult Parole Authority supervision or at large from it, by the year and month of the next parole board hearing entered as YYYYMM, or by offender number with its prefix, A or R for men and W for women, as six digits with a leading zero added to a five digit number.
A residential search returns the last recorded address rather than the current whereabouts, and for an absconder only the address before the person went at large. The page also carries the department's victim registration, the automatic notice to victims under Roberta's Law since March 22, 2013 for aggravated murder, murder, first through third degree offenses of violence and life sentences, and the parole violators at large list.
Reading an Ohio result
A record on the Attorney General's database or a sheriff's site gives the offense, the tier that sets the verification rhythm and the length of the duty, the supervision status and the compliance flag; the sheriff of the county of residence holds the full file and answers questions about a registrant's next verification date, the residence limit and any notice sent to the neighborhood.
Questions about the Ohio sex offender registry
Related Ohio records
The rest of Ohio's public records are covered here as well: the Ohio inmate search guide for the state and county lookups, the Ohio arrest records guide for booking information, the Ohio court records guide for the clerks' case search, and the Ohio county pages for every sheriff.