The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation keeps the state's sex offender registry and publishes it on its registry website, which it redesigned, in its words, to be clearer and easier to understand, with a video on the home page, a search, email alerts, an offender map, registry information and a safety and education section, and a list of the registered offenders the bureau wants found because they are in violation of the registry laws. The TBI's own page places the registry among the public registries it runs beside the animal abuse, drug offender and persistent domestic violence offender registries, with the bureau's headquarters at 901 R.S. Gass Boulevard in Nashville, reached at (615) 744-4000, and the registry itself answering at 1-888-837-4170 and tbisormgr@tbi.tn.gov.
The site's disclaimer says what the TBI vouches for and what it does not: the registry exists as a public information resource so that people can take proactive measures for the safety of their communities, the information on it was provided to the TBI by each offender's registering agency, the bureau does not guarantee its accuracy, anyone with reasonable proof that a profile is wrong contacts that registering agency, and because the database is updated daily, anything viewed or printed is assured only on the day it was viewed or printed; misuse of the information to commit a crime, threats, intimidation, stalking and harassment included, may bring prosecution or civil liability. The sheriff's office that registers offenders in each county is on the Tennessee county pages.
- Search: the TBI registry search by name, alias, address, city, county, ZIP Code, offender ID, registry status or offense, up to eight terms at once, with incarcerated offenders included and full details behind each photograph.
- Alerts: an email whenever a chosen offender's information is updated, requested from the envelope icon on the offender's details page, plus a tip button, a printable PDF and an offender map.
- Registration: in person at the sheriff's office of the county where the offender lives, works or attends college, the homeless included, with a jail inmate registering within 48 hours before release.
- Reporting dates: violent sexual offenders report in person every March, June, September and December, sexual offenders once a year within seven days before or after the birthday, with a fee of up to $100 kept by the sheriff.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Tennessee's own systems: the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation sex offender registry page, the TBI registry forms page, the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry home page, the registry search page with its disclaimer and instructions, the registry information page, the University of Tennessee County Technical Assistance Service guide to the registration of sexual offenders and violent sexual offenders, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Searching the TBI registry
The search page opens with its own disclaimer: everything on the site rests on what the offender told the registering agency, and it changes whenever the offender's circumstances change or the police discover that what they were told was wrong. A search takes any combination of up to eight terms, a name or part of one, an alias, an address, a city, a county, a ZIP Code, an offender ID, a registry status or an offense, with every field optional, and the results include offenders in prison; adding terms narrows the search, removing one broadens it, and an arrow reveals further filters.
Clicking an offender's photograph opens the full details, where an envelope icon signs the visitor up for an email alert whenever that offender's information is updated, a print icon produces a PDF of the page and an information icon sends a tip or updated information to the bureau. The home page lists the wanted violators with their last known whereabouts, aliases and offenses, from Memphis and Nashville to Bristol and Lawrenceburg when read, and asks anyone with information about them to come forward; a missing or exploited child is reported to 1-800-THE-LOST, which is 1-800-843-5678, and the site itself was built with a grant from the federal Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking.
Registering with the sheriff
The County Technical Assistance Service, the University of Tennessee office that advises county governments, sets out the sheriff's side of the Tennessee Sexual Offender and Violent Sexual Offender Registration, Verification and Tracking Act of 2004, enacted as Public Chapter 921 and amended by Public Chapter 316 of 2005. Offenders who live, work or attend college in the county register in person at the sheriff's office, and homeless offenders register as well; an offender held in the county jail registers in person with the sheriff or the sheriff's designee within 48 hours before release; offenders committed to mental health institutions or continuously confined to a home or health care facility by a mental or physical disability are exempt.
The information collected is the list in section 40-39-203(i) of the Tennessee Code, every item of which the sheriff enters into the state's TIES system within 12 hours of receiving it, and within three days of an initial registration the sheriff mails the original signed TBI registration form to the bureau's Nashville headquarters and keeps a duplicate as a business record of the office.
Quarterly for violent sexual offenders, yearly for the rest
Every violent sexual offender under the sheriff's jurisdiction reports in person to the sheriff's office at least once in each of March, June, September and December, and every sexual offender reports once a year, no earlier than seven calendar days before and no later than seven calendar days after the date of birth, to update fingerprints, palm prints and the photograph as the sheriff deems necessary and to verify that the information on the TBI registration form is still accurate.
A violent sexual offender pays an administrative fee of up to $100 at the March visit and a sexual offender at the annual visit, money the sheriff keeps to buy equipment, defray personnel and maintenance costs or meet any other expense of running the act; offenders living in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, those committed to mental health institutions and those continuously confined by disability are exempt from the in person reporting and from the fee.
After each quarterly or annual visit the sheriff again enters the data into TIES within 12 hours and mails the original signed form to the TBI within three days, keeping a copy. The TBI's forms page holds the registry forms the sheriffs use.
The registry's other services
Beyond the search, the site's information page gathers the bureau's questions and answers, its separate answers on termination of registration, the registry law and the registry contact, and the home page links the email alert service and the offender map alongside federal safety resources for parents and children, the national sex offender website and the state's missing persons list. The bureau asks that further questions go to tbisormgr@tbi.tn.gov.
Reading a Tennessee result
A profile on the TBI site is the sheriff's record as last reported by the offender, with a status that says whether the person is complying, and a wanted listing means the bureau believes the person has broken the registry law; the registering agency named on the profile is the one that holds the file, takes corrections and knows the next reporting date, quarterly for a violent sexual offender and the birthday window for a sexual offender.
Questions about the Tennessee sex offender registry
Related Tennessee records
Tennessee's other public records have guides on this site: Tennessee arrest records for what a booking makes public, Tennessee inmate search for the Department of Correction felony offender lookup and the county jails, Tennessee court records for the clerks of court, and the Tennessee county pages for all 95 sheriffs.