Frequently asked questions
Is this an official government website?
No. Offender Map is an independent, unofficial project. It is not affiliated with, and is not endorsed by, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI), the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS), or any other state agency. See About & Data Sources.
Where does the data come from?
Offender records come from each state's own registry: the North Carolina Sex Offender and Public Protection Registry (NCSBI), the Florida Sexual Offender and Predator Registry (FDLE), and the Texas Public Sex Offender Registry (TxDPS). School locations come from public school directories, plus a private-school and child care directory for North Carolina. Full details are on the About page.
How often is the site updated?
The full site is rebuilt from the registry weekly. Street-address and ZIP-centroid geocoding is refreshed incrementally during scheduled builds. The current snapshot time is shown on the home page and on every county page.
Why does a map pin look like it's in the wrong spot?
A usable registered address receives a validated street-address geocode when it can be matched, or a ZIP centroid fallback when it cannot. Both are approximate: street-address coordinates are interpolated along an address range, not verified rooftop or GPS locations. Administrative, transient, unknown, and out-of-state placeholder addresses are not mapped.
Is "within 3 miles" a driving distance?
No. Distances on school pages are straight-line (great-circle) distance from the school, not driving distance, and are limited to a 3-mile radius.
Someone I expected to see isn't listed, or someone disappeared. Why?
This site only reproduces what's in the official registry at the time of the weekly rebuild. Registrations end, addresses change, and records are added or removed on the state's own schedule, not this site's.
Can I get an entry removed or corrected?
This site cannot alter official registry records. For a correction to an official registration, or for the authoritative record on any individual, use that state's official registry — linked from the About & Data Sources page — directly. If the error is specific to this website (a wrong map pin, a broken page), use the Contact page.
Can I download or reuse this data?
The underlying records are public information published by each state. For bulk data or research use, the authoritative source is that state's official registry, linked from the About & Data Sources page; please review its terms before republishing.
Glossary
Registered address
The address an individual has reported to the registry, as required by law. It may not reflect where someone is physically present at any given moment.
Offense description
The offense or conviction description shown for an offender, as published in the registry record. North Carolina and Texas publish this; Florida's public data file contains no offense information, so Florida entries show none.
Risk level
A High/Moderate/Low assessment that the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS) publishes for some Texas registrants. It is shown labelled as TxDPS's own finding, never restated as this site's judgement, and a record TxDPS has not assessed shows nothing rather than an "unknown" label. North Carolina and Florida do not publish a risk level.
ZIP centroid
The approximate geographic center of a ZIP code area, used as a fallback map location when a specific street address cannot be geocoded.
Snapshot
The full set of registry and school data as it existed at the time of a given weekly rebuild. Every page on this site reflects a specific snapshot, dated at the top of the home page.