Lawrenceville 2017 Halloween Sex Offender Safety Info

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — Before kids go out trick or treating on Halloween, fall is a good time to take inventory of who is living in your neighborhood.

To make it simple for parents across the state to protect their kids from dangers that may lurk in their neighborhoods or nearby, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation offers a searchable database — the Georgia Sex Offender Registry.

That database contains the names, offenses and last known addresses of the state’s registered sexual offenders and predators. There, you can search for sex offenders by address, city or county, offender’s name, zip code or distance from your address.

There are 162 offenders listed as living in Lawrenceville, according to the site.

You may want to avoid trick or treating at these houses and apartments on Halloween, or merely be aware of who’s living in your neighborhood during the rest of the year.

Registered sex offenders are prohibited from passing out candy on Halloween. They may not appear in a Halloween costume or as another child-centered holiday character, such as Santa or the Easter Bunny, in public. In the past, Georgia's pardons and paroles board has set up events that sex offender parolees were required to attend during peak Halloween hours.

You may also sign up at the registry to be notified when a sex offender moves into your neighborhood.

Georgia's sex offender registry was established according to a law passed by the General Assembly. The GBI says that information on the registry is provided by other agencies and is continuously changing, but that it makes every effort to ensure that the information contained in the registry is accurate.

Like the Lawrenceville Patch on Facebook to get more stories like this in your News Feed.