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: May 2025

Rhode Island has one of the shortest visitors grace periods of any state – just 24 hours!  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 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.

The other states that have this type of “visitors’ registry” are Alaska, Nevada and South Dakota.  Aside from having a very short grace period these states also share another thing – their state laws compel the SOR office to remove people from their registries when they leave the state.  So the motivation for this visitors’ registry is work avoidance.  Why would the SOR bureaucrats want to go through the work of adding people to their registry, only to have to remove them a week later?

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.

I can also now report that just a few days ago (in 2025) I spoke to a person who traveled to Rhode Island for about a week, went to the local sheriff’s department to register unaware of any visitors’ registry, but the sheriff’s department placed him on it anyway and told him, “No, you’re not going on our permanent registry.”  So folks, this must be a thing.

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 visit them once or twice per year but so far have kept my visits to less than 24 hours and never tested the visitors’ registry.

In May 2025 I was traveling in the Northeast and visited my brother and sister-in-law, crossing the Rhode Island state line from Connecticut at about 1:00 pm, visiting and staying the night.  Beforehand I had told my brother, “Hey, tell ya what.  Let’s you and me go to Boston the next day – just two old geezers, no wives or grandchildren, we don’t have to make anybody happy.” 

But you see, that meant we’d be leaving RI by mid-morning, thus stopping the RI clock several hours short of 24, only to be restarted at zero when we returned that evening because as noted above, there appears to be no limit on the number of repeat visits per year.  As long as I was out of Rhode Island sometime the following day it would again be less than 24 hours.

Interestingly, one of the things I wanted to get done while I was in Rhode Island was get my car’s wheel alignment worked on.  To do that we got up early on the day of our Boston trip, dropped the car off at a local Toyota service department and took a bus and train to Boston and back.  My brother dropped me off at Toyota the following morning, I picked up my car and left the state.

So my car was in Rhode Island for the entire time I was jumping in and out of the state.  That doesn’t count against me, right?

Previous visit: A walk through Downtown Providence – 2024

I haven’t posted about this trip before because it was part of the Epic Fail that was my 2024 Northeast US trip.  My car was in auto repair hell and I had to get it fixed and out of the state by noon the next day.

Providence's Canalscape

However, that evening my brother took me on a (way to long) walking tour of Downtown Providence, which is actually pretty nice.  They have an unpronounceable river/canal running through their downtown that they have canalscaped to great effect.

Now that I’ve promised to see more American cities I found some of the photos I took on that trip and here they are.  I told my brother that next time I come to Providence I’m going to see the sights and report on it like I have elsewhere.  Does he want to come with me?  Apparently not!

Previous visit: July 2022

In July 2022 my Rhode Island side trip was a little 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 spent less than 24 hours in Rhode Island.