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.
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.
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.
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