Under the Act, any sex offender must register with the Department of Corrections or local law enforcement within one business day of entering the state.

The offender's name, aliases, address, photograph, physical description, driver's license number, motor vehicle identification numbers, place of employment, date of birth, crime, date and place of conviction, and length and conditions of sentence are part of the public record, maintained on the Internet.

Held: Because the Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act is nonpunitive, its retroactive application does not violate the ex post facto clause.

The Court decided 6–3 that the legislature's intent was to create a civil, nonpunitive program to protect the public and that the resulting dissemination of the registration information was not significant enough to declare as debilitating.

Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion said, "It is also clear beyond peradventure that these unique consequences of conviction of a sex offense are punitive.