Charlotte 2018 Halloween Sex Offender Safety Info

CHARLOTTE, NC — Before kids go out trick or treating on Halloween, fall is a good time to take an 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 North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation offers a handy, searchable database. That database contains the names, offenses and last known addresses of the state's registered sexual offenders and predators.

There are 894 registered offenders listed as living in Charlotte, according to the site. Parents who want to check out the map for themselves can visit the North Carolina's sex offender registry. There, you can search for sex offenders by: address, county, offender's name, latitude and longitude, and the offender's sex registration number.

The Board of Directors for the National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws objects to local public safety maps which pinpoint the addresses of individuals listed on official state sex-offender registries. You can read their letter to Patch explaining their position here.

READ ALSO -- 'Then I See The Delight In Your Eyes Turn To Fear': This is why Patch publishes local sex offender maps.

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The information on the online registry is considered public record, NCSBI said. "This information is made available for purposes of protecting the public, for increasing awareness, for keeping the public informed and for allowing citizens to take proactive measures to ensure safety in their communities," the website said.

Residents can also sign up to receive notifications by signing up here.

Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries can play only a limited role in preventing child sexual abuse and stress that most perpetrators are known to the child. The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the National Sex Offender Public Website, estimates that only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child.

The Justice Department estimates 60 percent of perpetrators are known to the child but are not family members but rather family friends, babysitters, child care providers and others, and 30 percent of child victims are abused by family members. Nearly a quarter of the abusers are under the age of 18, the department estimates.

Article image via Patch Media