Atwo Zee, Registered Traveler

Before I wrecked my life and ended up on Florida’s Sex Offender registry I always intended to travel in my retirement. Now, after prison and probation, I am in fact retired, and “free,” and have not given up my dream of seeing natural wonders and historic sites, visiting great cities, traveling to as many places as possible within the restrictions placed on me as a registered citizen.

While I may attempt traveling the world in the future, everything I’ve heard and read about International Megan’s Law requirements makes it sound difficult and even dangerous for a registered person. I therefore decided that my own home country is a pretty big place that, so far at least, nobody can keep my out of. Including all of its states and territories the United States spans half the globe and extends from the arctic to the equator. A guy could spend his whole retirement traveling this great land and never really see all of it.

As many of you may have discovered, however, interstate travel as a registered citizen isn’t as simple as getting in your car and driving away. Unless you don’t mind the prospect of inadvertently violating the registry laws of either your own state or whatever state you’re in at the time and ending up back in prison for a registry violation, it’s crucial to be conversant with and obey the registry laws of every state you plan to pass thru, which for me is every US state and territory.

The starting point for my research was the chart “Summary of State and Territorial Registration Laws Concerning Visiting and Temporary Residence by Adults” available on the Association for Constitutional Sex Offender Laws (ACSOL) website. It’s a good summary chart, but it hadn’t been updated since 2018. Using the state statute references in the ACSOL chart I downloaded every state and territory’s registry laws, read them all, updated the information on the chart and corrected any errors that I found.

I also obtained a list of phone numbers for all 50 states’ SOR offices, and called every state to ask supplemental questions. As you might expect, some SOR offices don’t answer the phone and never call back if you leave repeated messages. Some states SOR offices have outgoing messages that don’t allow you to leave a message but only refer you to unhelpful online FAQ documents. Nevertheless, I found that when I was able to speak to a real person (which was about half the time) the SOR office personnel were uniformly courteous and willing to provide helpful answers to my questions.

The result of my research is the new and improved “Summary of State and Territorial Registration Laws Concerning Visiting and Temporary Residence by Adults” chart. CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW. My plan is to keep re-researching and updating this chart for at least the next ten years (i.e. 2021-2031) while I travel the USA.

However, all of this research – whether the state laws themselves, written responses to letters, or the oral responses by a random person in a state SOR office – may bear no relation at all to what you or I may experience if pulled over by an over-eager redneck sheriff’s deputy because you have a blown tail light. Do you want to be the first person to test the limits of any of this? I’ll bet the answer to that is NO.

So be careful out there, and safe travels!

Legal Disclaimer

I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY. THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE AND SHOULD NOT SUBSTITUTE FOR QUALIFIED LEGAL ADVICE.

Because sex offender laws are frequently revised by legislatures and reviewed by courts, the most current version of the applicable laws should be consulted and can generally be found by using your search engine to locate the statutes referenced on this site. This website does not include all laws that may apply to registrants in any particular state.

Updated 9/22 State & Territorial Visitor Registration Laws Guide

Click HERE. It'll pop up on your screen in a separate window.

Summary Map Click HERE. It'll pop up on your screen in a separate window.

Updated 9/22 State & Territorial Visitor Registration Laws for FORMER & LONG-TERM Registrants

MANY REGISTRANTS DO NOT UNDERSTAND that most states have registration laws that apply to out-of-state visitors even if you have served your registration duty in your state of offense and are no longer required to register there. Violating these states' laws during your visit can get you caught in these states' registries or even incarcerated EVEN THOUGH you have been removed from your own state's registry!

Furthermore, you may be surprised to learn that some states' registration laws may not apply to visiting registrants who have, in your state of offense, served your registration duty for the number of years specified by law in the state you are visiting - even if you are still on the registry in your state of offense.

Because confusion surrounding this issue will be a growing problem as more and more Americans (including myself) become long-term or former registrants, I have researched the registration laws of every U.S. state and territory related to this issue.

Click HERE to see this new research.

NEW! 11/23 My 2023 NARSOL conference domestic travel presentation

I have given several presentations on domestic travel at NARSOL and other national conferences. My presentation at the 2023 NARSOL conferences was recorded and is now available as a You Tube video.

This is about an hour long but contains a lot of information about domestic travel, so Click HERE to watch.

The Traveling Registrant

The Once Fallen website offers this must-read information for all registrants planning to travel. Click here: http://www.oncefallen.com/travel.html

Unwelcome Images

My personal story of prison, probation and ... redemption? is posted on Medium. If you're interested you can click here:

https://therabbitisin.com/unwelcome-images-c06a3760b11a

Your first hurdle:

Permission to leave town

My state of offense (Florida) has a registry law that, like those of many other states, is completely silent on the question of what notice I as a registered person have to provide in the event that I intend to travel out of state temporarily but have no intention of establishing any “permanent residence,” “temporary residence” or “transient residence” in any other state. Instead, Florida’s SOR law reads as follows:

“A sexual offender who intends to establish a permanent, temporary, or transient residence in another state or jurisdiction other than the State of Florida shall report in person to the sheriff of the county of current residence within 48 hours before the date he or she intends to leave this state to establish residence in another state or jurisdiction … The sexual offender shall provide to the sheriff the address, municipality, county, [and] state … of intended residence … The department shall notify the statewide law enforcement agency, or a comparable agency, in the intended state [or] jurisdiction … of the sexual offender’s intended residence. The failure of a sexual offender to provide his or her intended place of residence is punishable as [a third degree felony].”

943.0435(7) FS.

Apparently, the drafters of Florida’s SOR law – and the many similarly worded statutes of other US states – never anticipated that a registered person would ever leave their state for any other reason than to establish a “permanent residence,” “temporary residence” or “transient residence” wherever they're going. Therefore I assume that I and many of you could legitimately assume we would be within our legal rights to just leave our state without telling anybody as long as you have no intention of, and scrupulously avoid, establishing any kind of residence that would violate your state’s statutes.

However, I DO NOT recommend doing this under any circumstances.

Why? Because there’s a 120% chance that your local sheriff’s department believes you have to tell them you’re leaving and where you’re going no matter what your state’s SOR law says or doesn’t say. Suppose you get pulled over somewhere for having a blown tail light. The sheriff’s deputy looks you up and discovers you’re an out-of-state registered offender. Next, he calls local law enforcement in your home state and asks, “Hey, did y’all know this guy was here?” They of course will say “No, we didn’t even know he left our state and we think that’s a registry violation – he is an ABSCONDER!” at which point you’ll be arrested, handcuffed and sent back to prison.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I want to spend my vacation.

Therefore I strongly suggest that you visit your local sheriff’s department or registry office and inform them of your intention to travel. I did this for the first time in October 2020, and have traveled out of state frequently since then, each time making sure to do so “within 48 hours before the date he or she intends to leave this state.”

Having gained some experience with traveling while registered I offer you the following advice:

Always notify your local law enforcement of your intention to travel and provide as much detail as possible about your travel plans. In particular, it helps to have at least one specific destination for your trip. Your local law enforcement is expecting you to have a destination. You probably do have at least one destination, and if it’s not a friend or relative’s home you probably had to make some kind of reservation ahead of time. Either way you know at least one address where you’ll be, so give it to the staff person behind the glass. They will feel more comfortable with this even if your plans include extended time to get to and return from the specific destination(s), during which you’ll be enjoying yourself.

I have found that if I give a general description of your travel, like some of the states you’ll be passing through, the staff person will happily enter that onto whatever form their filling out as “additional notes.” This may actually help you in case you get pulled over someplace because when the sheriff’s deputy calls your home state it’s all right there in the computer.

Recently I established a summer home in Iowa. Unlike Florida and many other states, Iowa’s registry law explicitly, but clumsily, addresses out-of-state travel. It says:

“[A] sex offender, within five business days of a change, shall also appear in person to notify the sheriff of the county of principal residence [i.e. the principle residence in Iowa], of any location in which the offender is staying when away from the principal residence of the offender for more than five days, by identifying the location and the period of time the offender is staying in such location.” 692A.105 IS.

While I was at my new Iowa sheriff’s department registering, getting photographed, fingerprinted and providing a DNA sample, I took the opportunity to ask how travel was going to work in my new state. I pointed out that although I can always provide a destination when traveling, there is no way I’ll be able provide locations and addresses ahead of time for every campground or motel room I might be staying at along the way.

The lady behind the bullet-proof glass stated that their policy for this type of travel is that I will need to keep a travel log for each trip, which I will need to turn in upon my return. This just shows how local sheriff’s departments come up with some policy to deal with these situations. As you know from reading elsewhere on this blog, I recommend you always keep a travel log as well as all receipts just in case you need to prove your whereabouts, so this sheriff’s department requirement, while ridiculous, turns out not to be a problem for me or anyone following my recommendations.

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Rhode Island

From the 50 State Visitor Guide:

R.I. Gen. Laws 2019 §§11-37.1-1 through 11-37.1-20

Registration Triggers and Deadlines:

24 hours for initial reg. and updates for all registrants who are moving to state, working in state, or are students. §11-37.1-4.

Statutes make no specific provision for visitors. However, RI SOR office states thatvisitors in state for not more that 10 bus. days or two weeks (whichever comes first) must “check in” at local police department within 24 hours for “temporary registration” which does not go on the registry. Return to “check out” when departing the state.Also, there appears to be no limit on number of repeat visits per year.

Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:

Level 3 offenders barred from schools and parks. Level 3 also can’t reside within 1000 feet of a K-12 school. Note: this restriction was enjoined in 2015 pending a trial on the merits. Lawsuit still pending in 2020 & injunction still in place.

Other registrants including visitors – can’t reside within 300 feet of K-12 school.

Only Level 2&3 offenders are placed on the public website. §11-37.1-12.

Duration & updates:

10 years to life. Updates: SVPs – quarterly. All others – quarterly for first 2 years,then annual. §11-37.1-4.

Rhode Island - small but mighty cool to visit

Most recent visit: December 2023

I have been participating in (at least listening in on) the ACSOL monthly call-in meetings since they started having them a few years ago. Interstate travel has been one of the most requested topics of discussion at every one of those call-in meetings. Each time, the meeting hosts provide the very good advice that registrants should be keenly aware of the amount of time allowed in any state you visit before registration is required because some states’ deadlines are very short and you do not want to end up on any state’s registry (aside from your home state) if you can possibly avoid it.

At most of the ACSOL call-in meetings I have attended, Rhode Island has been given as an example of a state to be avoided because their registration deadline is among the shortest of all – just 24 hours! Another short-deadline state they often mention is Nevada (48 hours) which makes sense because ACSOL is based next door in California. They have a lot of California members that need to be warned about this.

However, when I conducted my first research for this travel blog in the summer of 2020 I called as many state SOR offices as would answer the phone to clarify what their policies actually were, and I found that Rhode Island (along with Nevada) is one of a handful of states that, by policy, claimed to treat a statutory very short visitor registration requirement as a “duty to check in” but holds registrant visitor information pending a commitment to depart within a specified time – the friendly RI SOR office lady said 10 business days or two weeks, whichever comes first. At departure she claimed it is discarded or filed without ever going on the registry.

Dear friends: I agree with everyone who keeps cautioning me that you can’t take at face value anything that some random SOR office lady tells you on the phone. I’m just reporting the news here. And I can also tell you that when I called the RI SOR office back in the Spring of 2021 they gave me the same answer.

Although Rhode Island is a tiny state, the question of what their registration policy is concerns me more than it might the average registrant because I have a brother and sister-in-law living there. I have visited them several times since I’ve been off probation but, oddly, never spent more than 24 hours in Rhode Island on any one visit.

In December 2023 I traveled from Florida with my now ex-wife but still Best Friend Forever to visit relatives and participate in a Wreaths Across America event on Long Island. My brother and sister-in-law were of course on the list of relatives to be visited, but the plan all along was to just go to lunch together, stay a few hours and be on our way.

We had stayed the previous night at a hotel near Hartford, CT, then entered Rhode Island late morning the next day. Lunch. Visit. Leave. By 4 pm we were back in Connecticut on our way to our next hotel in New London. I was never in RI long enough for anyone to be concerned about it.

Downtown Providence

Previous visit: July 2022

In July 2022 my Rhode Island side trip was a little more complicated but still didn’t test Rhode Island’s visitor registration policy.

I was there to visit my brother & sister-in-law and to meet up with my own family who had spent the previous four days with my ex-inlaws on Long Island while I was having an epic fail trying to go whale watching in Maine. We all met up at a very nice restaurant and had a family dinner and visited together. Then I stayed the night at my brother’s house while the rest of the family stayed at a hotel (my ex-wife is allergic to cats).

The next morning my brother (but not my sister-in-law) accompanied me to Boston, where all of us met up again and spent the day being tourists (see my MA blog post). Once that was over my brother got on a train to go back home to Rhode Island while the rest of us continued on to New Hampshire (my second time there, see my NH blog post).

As you can see, on this trip I also spent less than 24 hours in Rhode Island. If I’m going to test this state’s “visitor registry” policy I want to do it when I have more time available AND have the option of skedaddling out of state if the local police department gives me a different answer than the SOR office did.

Atwo Zee, Registered Traveler

Thursday, January 11, 2024

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