The South Carolina Code of Laws puts the registry under the Chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, SLED, which develops and operates it to collect and maintain the information, share it with every law enforcement agency in the state and elsewhere and keep unauthorized people out of it, and the division's registry page explains the public side: the Sex Offender Registry Tool, SORT, an application the United States Department of Justice provides at no charge, which shares information across jurisdictions, feeds the national public website and sends community notifications, and shows multiple photographs of each offender over time, a map of where the offender lives, past aliases and every sexually related offense of conviction. The public registry site searches by name or by geographic location and shows photographs, aliases, reported addresses, map locations and offense information, with SLED maintaining it in coordination with the county sheriffs' offices; a visitor who accepts the conditions of use, enters the verification code and opens Community Notifications can register for notices.
The conditions of use make three points: the sheriffs and SLED update the information regularly but it changes quickly and much of it comes from the offenders themselves, often before the police have verified it, so a record is information of record rather than a guarantee of where the person is today; people are included because the law requires it after a qualifying conviction, not as a warning that anyone is a present danger; and under section 23-3-510 a crime committed with registry information carries up to $1,000 and six months more for a misdemeanor and up to five more years for a felony. Questions and corrections go to the SLED Sex Offender Registry at P.O. Box 21398, Columbia, SC 29210, by phone at 803-896-2601, by fax at 803-896-2311 or to sor@sled.sc.gov, and the sheriff of every county is on the South Carolina county pages.
- Search: the SLED public registry by name or geographic location, with photographs over time, aliases, addresses, maps and offenses, and community notifications by sign up.
- Tiers: Tier I, Tier II and Tier III by the offense of conviction under section 23-3-430, with any later offense after becoming a Tier I or II offender counted as Tier III; a conviction elsewhere takes the equivalent federal tier.
- Registration: with the sheriff of every county where the offender lives, owns property, works or attends school, within one business day of release or sentencing, then twice a year for life in the birth month and six months later; sexually violent predators and federal Tier III offenders verify every 90 days.
- Removal: an application to SLED after 15 years for Tier I and 25 years for Tier II, decided within 120 days, or a motion in general sessions court for a Tier III offender 30 years after discharge.
Written by SearchSystems.net from South Carolina's own systems: the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division state sex offender registry page, the South Carolina public sex offender registry, Title 23, Chapter 3 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, with the registry article in sections 23-3-400 through 23-3-555, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The three tiers, and who registers
Section 23-3-430 of the Code of Laws reaches anyone of any age living in South Carolina who was convicted, pleaded guilty or nolo contendere, or was found not guilty by reason of insanity, here, in a comparable court elsewhere in the United States, in a foreign country or in federal court, of a listed offense or of an offense that required registration where the plea was entered, and a person who stays in the state for 30 days in a twelve month period is a resident.
Tier I holds criminal sexual conduct in the third degree, kidnapping of an adult unless the court finds no sexual offense was involved, incest, buggery, peeping and voyeurism, indecent exposure when the court specifically orders registration, sexual intercourse with a patient or trainee, drugging a person to commit a crime, any offense the judge adds at sentencing for good cause, any offense the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act requires and the morphed image forms of obscene visual representation and sexual exploitation of a minor, where a juvenile adjudicated in family court is not an offender.
Tier II holds criminal sexual conduct in the second degree, engaging a child for a sexual performance, producing or promoting one, trafficking in persons unless the court finds no sexual offense, criminal sexual conduct with minors in the second and third degree unless the court finds the conduct was consensual with an offender of 18 or less or between people under 16, criminal solicitation of a minor for sexual activity, the obscenity offenses involving a minor and the three degrees of sexual exploitation of a minor.
Tier III holds criminal sexual conduct in the first degree and with minors in the first degree, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping of a person under 18 by anyone but a parent, criminal sexual conduct and sexual battery against a spouse, and any listed offense committed after the person became a Tier I or Tier II offender. A pardon does not remove a name unless it rests on a finding of not guilty, a reversed or vacated conviction does, and a child of 14 or older adjudicated for a Tier III offense must register while the family court decides for other offenses and for children of 12 and 13, applying a psychosexual risk assessment, the ages, the aggravating and mitigating factors and prior adjudications; a resident child adjudicated in another state registers for the period that state sets.
Registering with the sheriff: one business day, every six months, every 90 days
Before release from the Department of Corrections or the Department of Juvenile Justice, or on parole or probation, the agency tells the offender in writing and in person to register with the sheriff of the intended county within one business day of release, and an offender sentenced to probation registers within one business day of sentencing; the agencies send SLED the initial information and a current photograph before release in case the offender never appears.
Under section 23-3-450 the offender registers with the sheriff of each county where the person lives, owns real property, is employed, or attends, is enrolled, volunteers, interns or carries on a vocation at any public or private school from secondary and adult education schools to colleges and vocational schools, during the hours the sheriff sets, and is not registered until every item SLED prescribes has been given; the sheriff forwards it all to SLED within three business days and tells every local and campus police agency in the county within three business days.
Section 23-3-460 then requires registration twice a year for life, in the birth month and again in the sixth month after it, at the sheriff's department of every such county, subject to the removal sections, with a person a court has found to be a sexually violent predator verified and photographed every 90 days and a person classified as Tier III under the federal act registering every 90 days. A move within the county is reported in writing within three business days, a move to another county by registering with the new sheriff and notifying the old one within three business days, where a temporary address is anywhere the person lives for ten or more consecutive days, a move out of state by written notice within three business days, and a change in school attendance, enrollment, volunteering, internship, employment or vocation within three business days, employment meaning more than 14 days or 30 days in a calendar year; a registrant who moves in from another state, acquires property, takes a job or starts school in South Carolina registers within three business days, and the Department of Motor Vehicles tells every new resident and every renewing driver about the duty in writing.
Coming off: the 2022 act and the SLED application
On May 23, 2022 the Governor signed the act that followed the state Supreme Court's decision in Powell v. Keel, giving every registrant a way off the lifetime registry by creating state tiers and tier based removal, and on May 22, 2025 two further acts added offenses to Tier I and changed when a Tier I offender may apply; the 2022 act applies retroactively to everyone then registered. Under section 23-3-462 a Tier I offender may ask SLED to end the registration after being registered for 15 years, or 15 years after discharge from incarceration without supervision, or 15 years after the end of active probation or parole, and a Tier II offender after 25 years on the same terms, each including a person required to register for an out of state or federal conviction who is eligible for removal where the conviction occurred; an adult Tier III offender may not apply to SLED at all.
The applicant must have completed every required sex offender treatment program, must have no failure to register conviction in the previous ten years and no additional sexual offense since being placed on the registry, and pays a filing fee of up to $250; the application may be filed 120 days early. SLED reviews the file, runs fingerprint based state and federal checks and tells the original prosecuting agency, and within 120 days of the request removes the name or refuses because of a new conviction, a failure to comply or the prosecutor's objection; a denied applicant waits five years, or cannot reapply at all after a new sexual offense unless it is overturned or pardoned, and may appeal to the general sessions court of the county of conviction, or of residence for an out of state conviction, with juveniles going to the family court that adjudicated them.
The SLED page spells out the paper application, which must go by mail to the SOR Unit at P.O. Box 21398, Columbia, SC 29221 with two sets of fingerprints on the blue card, a $250 money order or cashier's check payable to SLED, every sentencing sheet, and official proof of treatment completion from the provider, and warns that applying removes nothing until SLED's written notice arrives, so registration continues meanwhile. Under section 23-3-463 a Tier III offender may instead move the general sessions court 30 years after discharge from incarceration without supervision or the end of active supervision, with counsel appointed for the indigent, an evaluation by a qualified evaluator from the Office of Mental Health, the state represented by the prosecutor who obtained the conviction or the Attorney General, the victim notified, and removal only on clear and convincing evidence that the person is no longer a foreseeable risk to reoffend; a person with offenses in different tiers waits for the highest tier's period, and a denial closes the door for five years.
What the public may get, and the half mile notice
Under section 23-3-490 the registry information is open to public inspection and must be available on the internet. A sheriff or SLED releases, on a written or electronic request, the full names of the registered offenders, their aliases, identifying physical characteristics, dates of birth, home addresses on file, the offense requiring registration and the date, city and state of conviction, with a photocopy of a current photograph, and the sheriff may give the registry to a county newspaper for publication; SLED supplies a list of registrants by city, county or ZIP Code or for the whole state, and information on a named person, for a reasonable copying fee.
A sheriff may release information whenever it would deter crime or enhance public safety, and must notify the principals of public and private schools and the administrators of child day care centers and family day care centers of any offender whose address is within half a mile of the school or business. For juveniles adjudicated in family court, Tier III information is public on the same terms, while information on other juvenile registrants goes only on request to victims and witnesses, schools, day care centers and organizations serving children, women or vulnerable adults.
Where a registrant may not live, work or stay
Section 23-3-535 bars a sex offender convicted of criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the first or second degree, assault with intent to commit it, kidnapping a person under 18 or trafficking a person under 18 from living within 1,000 feet, measured in a straight line from the nearest part of the residence property to the nearest property line, of a school, a day care center with three or more preschool or nine or more school age children, a children's recreational facility run by a city, county or special purpose district, a park or a public playground, with home schools and colleges excluded.
The rule spares anyone who lived there before the act, who owned the property before being charged, whose school or park arrived later, or who lives in a jail, a licensed group home or treatment facility for people under 21, a homeless shelter for up to a year, a community residential care facility or a nursing home; a sheriff or police department that finds a violation gives 30 days' notice to move, after which a first offense carries up to 30 days or $500, a second up to three years or $1,000 and a third up to five years or $5,000, no local government may set different boundaries or penalties, and each school district must give parents at each bus stop the names and addresses of every offender within 1,000 feet of the stop or a link to the registry on its website.
Section 23-3-538 bars the same offenders from operating, working for or volunteering at any child oriented business, a school, day care, children's recreational facility, arcade, trampoline park, amusement park, public playground or ice cream truck among them, with an employer who knowingly keeps them on after notice fined up to $100 a day, and section 23-3-465 bars every registrant from campus student housing at a public college.
Electronic monitoring, internet identifiers and the penalties
Section 23-3-540 requires a court to order active electronic monitoring by the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services on release for criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the first degree under section 16-3-655(A)(1) or the third degree, and lets a court order it for the other offenses involving minors it lists, for as long as the person remains on the registry, at the person's expense unless the department finds severe hardship; the device records the person's location at least once a minute around the clock, tampering with it is a felony carrying up to $5,000 or five years, damage must be reported within two hours, and after ten years a monitored person other than a first or third degree offender may petition the chief administrative judge of general sessions for release on clear and convincing evidence of compliance, with a new petition every five years after a denial.
Under section 23-3-555 every registrant gives the internet accounts and the email, user and screen names used for forums, chat rooms, messaging and social networking at each registration and reports a change in writing to the sheriff within three business days, and an interactive computer service may obtain the list from SLED to screen or block registrants without republishing it. Failing to register or to report a change of address, employment or school, under section 23-3-470, is a misdemeanor carrying up to $1,000 or 366 days for a first offense, a mandatory 366 days for a second and a felony with a mandatory five years, three of them unsuspendable, for a third; registering with false information carries the same ladder; harboring or concealing a non compliant registrant is a felony carrying up to $5,000 or five years; and an arrest for failure to register is itself notice of the duty.
Reading a South Carolina result
A record on the SLED site is a sheriff's registration as the offender last reported it, with the offense that fixes the tier and the photographs taken at each twice yearly visit; a sexually violent predator verifies every 90 days, a Tier I or II registrant can come off through SLED after 15 or 25 years and a Tier III registrant only through the court after 30, and the sheriff of each county where the person lives, owns property, works or studies holds the file and answers whether a home sits inside the thousand foot zone.
Questions about the South Carolina sex offender registry
Related South Carolina records
South Carolina's other public records are covered on this site: the South Carolina arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, the South Carolina inmate search guide for the Department of Corrections and county detention center lookups, the South Carolina court records guide for the county public index, and the South Carolina county pages for all 46 sheriffs.