National Sex Offender Registry
Canadian legal data base
The National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR) is a Canadian legal data base designed to monitor convicted sex offenders living in the country. It came into force on December 15, 2004, with the passing of the Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIR Act)
Significant amendments to the original legislation came into force in September 2008, and on April 15, 2011. Access is limited to law officials and not available to the general public.
Any offender who is convicted of a primary designated sexual offence (e.g. sexual assault, sexual interference, possession of child pornography, etc.) will be ordered by the court, at the time of sentencing or within 90 days thereafter, to register with the registration site that serves the area of their main residence. A person so ordered must register within 7 days, or if they are incarcerated for their crime, within 7 days from their release date. The information that is collected from the offender is confidential, and is not available to the public.
The main purpose of Canada's NSOR is to assist a police officer who is investigating, or to help prevent, a crime of a sexual nature. NSOR analysts can provide the most current information available about a suspect who is already a registered sex offender, or can search the NSOR database for possible suspects in sexual offence cases where the offender is unknown.
The NSOR database also contains details concerning many sex offenders who were convicted and sentenced prior to December 15, 2004, referred to as "retrospective" offenders.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “National Sex Offender Registry” as canadian legal data base. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as canadian legal data base. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6978405. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2008 and 2011.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “National Sex Offender Registry”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow National Sex Offender Registry primary sources, National Sex Offender Registry archive and National research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “National Sex Offender Registry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.