Nevada: An Open Letter
From the 50 State Visitor Guide:
Nev. Rev. Stat. Ann. 2019 §§179B and 179D (Effective Oct. 1, 2018)
AWA Compliant
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
48 hours for initial registration and updates; updates may be in person. §§179D.460, 479D.480. However, Nevada SOR office states that visitors for less than 30 days are not placed on the SOR registry but on a separate “visitors registry” that is not public. Visitors must “check in” within 48 hours & provide info to law enforcement. Return to “check out” when departing the state. The “visitors registry” including the dates of your visit(s) is available to law enforcement agencies only.
This SOR office info updated & confirmed Apr. 2021.
Confirmed by Las Vegas Metro Police Dept. Oct. 2021.
Also: North Las Vegas Police “OffenderWatch” Safety Tips:
https://sheriffalerts.com/cap_safety_1.php?office=54127
“Do I have to register as a sex offender in North Las Vegas if I am only visiting? Sex offenders who will be visiting North Las Vegas and will be staying in North Las Vegas for more than 48 hours, must register as “Sex Offender – Visitor”.” (emphasis added)
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
No statewide restrictions.
Duration & updates:
15 years to life. §179D.480.
Procedure available for removal from registry after departure.
Most recent visit: October 2021
Dear Janice & Chance:
I have been listening in on the ACSOL monthly call-in meetings since you took them virtual on account of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. For a while you began each meeting by announcing a list of potential discussion topics and gauge interest by asking participants to vote on them by virtually “raising hands.” Travel (domestic & international) was always a top vote-getter at every meeting.
Every month, while giving your overview of domestic travel issues before taking questions, you stress the importance of not staying in any state long enough to trigger their requirement to register. Of course I strongly agree with that advice.
Every month, including the Oct. 15, 2022 meeting, you use Nevada is an example of how careful everyone should be, because Nevada state law allows only 48 hours for initial registration, one of the shortest grace periods of any state. §§179D.460, 479D.480. Nevada, and especially Las Vegas, is a major travel destination for everyone and especially Californians because it’s so close. You must be constantly inundated with questions about Nevada.
What you don’t seem to be aware of is that Nevada is one of a handful of states that, by policy, treats a statutory very short visitor registration requirement as a “duty to check in” but holds SO visitor information separately pending a commitment to depart within a specified time (up to 30 days); your info becomes part of a “visitors registry” that is not made public. Other states that do this are Alaska, South Dakota and Rhode Island.
I first became aware of this separate “visitors registry” while calling every state SOR office as part of my research in 2020. The nice lady at the Nevada SOR office told me all about it. Then, following your advice to not necessarily accept at face value anything some random person at a SOR office says, I called back in April 2021 to re-ask the question, and the same nice lady took my call. She even remembered me from my previous call. She gave me the same answer, with a few additional clarifying details.
And yet, there seems to be nothing on the Nevada SOR website about this, and month after month I hear you emphasize that no registered person should ever be in Nevada for more than 48 consecutive hours. You often say, “Folks, just leave Nevada overnight, get a receipt somewhere to prove it, then go back to continue your visit.”
Again, I strongly agree with that advice for any state that doesn’t maintain a separate unpublished “visitors registry.” Tennessee is an example of such a state with a 48 hour grace period, and if you read my posts about Tennessee you will see I emphasize the importance of watching the clock there. I guarantee you, nobody wants to wind up on Tennessee’s registry.
But what about Nevada? On my October 2021 Southwest trip, I decided to put this state to the ultimate test. I was passing through Nevada anyway on my way from California to Utah. So, restricting myself to two partial days in-state and foregoing all the potential sins and delights of Las Vegas, my one and only stop was the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. My sole purpose was to find out if they knew anything about this separate unpublished “visitors registry."
If there’s one thing I always say about police registry offices it’s this: “The person sitting at the desk behind the bullet proof glass is without a doubt the least knowledgeable person in the whole building.” That was certainly the case here. She had never heard of any “visitors registry.” However, with a little prodding I was able to get her to go ask her supervisor about it, and when she came back a few minutes later she smiled cheerfully and said, “Yes, there is a visitors registry, and as long as you check in within 48 hours of your arrival, and give us all the information about your visit, and come back to check out before you leave, you will go on that visitors registry.” So as far as I can tell Nevada’s unpublished “visitors registry” is a real thing.
You may be wondering why any state SOR office, whether in Nevada, Alaska, South Dakota, Rhode Island or elsewhere, would go out of their way to create a separate visitors registry when it’s not spelled out in state law. As a person who worked as a government bureaucrat his entire career (until I ruined my life), I’m confident I know the answer: work avoidance.
You see, these states have very short visitor registration requirements, but they also have standardized procedures available to remove you from their registries after you leave (unlike Tennessee, Florida and 13 other states that keep you on their registries forever in order to pad their numbers and get more federal funding).
What this means for a SOR office (or sheriff’s department) bureaucrat is that any time a visitor is forced to register, they have to do all the work of adding that person to their registry and posting it on their website. Then as soon as that person leaves the state they have to do all the work of removing that person from their registry and their website. That’s double the work for somebody they really couldn’t care less about. Thus is born the separate, low effort “visitors registry.”
While I was updating all my state by state research in August 2022, the nice lady at the South Dakota SOR office came right out and confirmed this when she said, “We have hundreds of sex offenders coming to the Sturgis Bike Rally every year. They typically stay more than three days but less than a week. Why would we want to register all these people and then have to remove them a few days later?”
[As an aside, I was amused by how the SOR lady’s description of the Sturgis Bike Rally made it sound like an annual sex offenders’ reunion. Hey, maybe NARSOL or ACSOL should hold next year’s national conference in Sturgis during the rally and make it official?]
The SOR lady stressed that all they are asking is that visiting registrants staying more than three days come in from the summer heat and check in at the local sheriff’s department, then check out when you leave. No harm, no foul.
Meanwhile, I have no choice but to point out that you are giving incomplete information about Nevada (and Rhode Island, which you often mention) on every monthly ACSOL phone call.
Sincerely,
Atwo Zee, Registered Traveler
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