North Dakota puts its district court index, its prison roster, its offender registry and its death index online for anyone to search by name, and its open records law tells agencies to hand over the rest unless a specific statute says otherwise.
The order that works: the court search first, because it covers criminal, traffic and civil cases statewide and tells you the county; then the prison and offender lookups for status; then the licensing, business and death index searches to pin down who the person is and whether they are still living; then the county pages for property and recorded documents.
- Courts: the District Court Case Search covers criminal, traffic and civil cases, open and closed, with the final disposition.
- In custody: the DOCR Resident Lookup is for people held in a state facility right now.
- Registered offenders: the offender search works by name, by city or county, or by a radius around an address.
- Identity checks: the Board of Medicine verifier, FirstStop business records and the public death index at Vital Records.
- Everything else: the open records law, which the Attorney General says applies to every state and local agency, and the county sources SearchSystems lists for property and recorded documents.
Written by SearchSystems.net from North Dakota's own systems: the North Dakota Court System case search page, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the sex offender website, the Board of Medicine, Vital Records at Health and Human Services, the Attorney General's open records and criminal history pages, the Secretary of State's election site, each read on October 13, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Start with the district court case search
The North Dakota Court System runs a free District Court Case Search that gives access to district court case information for criminal, traffic and civil case types, and the results also include municipal court cases from certain areas. The courts say the search does not include restricted case information, and they publish a description of exactly which data and which counties are searchable, along with a help guide and a page of frequently asked questions for the search itself. The older address, publicsearch.ndcourts.gov, now sends you to this page.
Read the results the way the court tells you to. The site shows a case as it is heard, whether it is still open or closed, and the final disposition when it closed. A case that began as a felony may have been changed to a misdemeanor or an infraction, or dismissed, as it moved through the court, so the courts say to open the case itself and read its Disposition section before concluding anything about the outcome. The same page carries the payment portals for criminal and traffic cases, chosen by the county or municipal court where the case was filed; the courts tell anyone requesting a hearing on a traffic case or asking about a defensive driving course to contact the clerk instead of paying.
Who is in a state prison right now
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation describes its Resident Lookup in one sentence: it is for individuals currently incarcerated in a North Dakota DOCR facility. Someone who has been released, or who is held in a county jail rather than a state facility, is not in it. The department also publishes a public dashboard, built with Recidiviz, with state level data on the corrections system, and a parole release dashboard on how parole sentences are completed; those are statistics, not name lookups. The department's older offender lookup address at nd.gov still answers but shows nothing, so the lookup on the department's home page is the one to use.
The sex offender registry, by name or by neighborhood
North Dakota's offender search takes a last name and or a first name and returns registered offenders. It also runs a neighborhood search: enter the address of a home, a school or a park, choose a city and a radius, and the site lists the offenders within that distance; there are also city and county searches. Every search can be limited to offenders who are incarcerated, not incarcerated, or both. After a search the site offers to map the results and to send email notifications when an offender's record is updated.
Doctors, physician assistants and genetic counselors
The Board of Medicine's license verification covers physicians, physician assistants and genetic counselors who are licensed to practice in North Dakota or were recently licensed here. The board says all current licensees are included, that some former licensees first licensed many years ago may not be, and that the physician license types in the search are active, inactive, resident, provisional temporary, locum tenens and special emeritus. A license type must be chosen before searching. The spelling of a name must be correct, but a search can start with only the first few letters of a last name; if a first name is entered, the whole last name must be typed correctly. A license number search needs the entire number, digits only. The board calls the site a primary source for its data, updated in real time from its licensure database, and warns that practice specialties and board certifications are self reported by the licensees.
Businesses and the people behind them
The Secretary of State's business records are searched through FirstStop. When SearchSystems read it, the search page itself carried no description of its contents, so this guide says only that it is the state's official business search and leaves the details to the page.
Births, deaths, marriages and the public death index
North Dakota Vital Records, part of Health and Human Services, issues certified copies of birth records, death records and fetal death records. Orders go online, by mail or, if needed, by an appointment scheduled in advance, and the office asks for 5 to 7 business days of processing once a request arrives, not counting return mail. For finding someone, the useful part is the office's Public Death Index, which it offers as a search from the same page. Marriage and divorce records are county records in North Dakota; the state page points to the counties for both. The office answers at (701) 328-2360 and by mail at Vital Records, 600 E. Boulevard Ave., Dept. 325, Bismarck, ND 58505-0250.
Money the state is holding for someone
The state's unclaimed property search runs at unclaimedproperty.nd.gov, the official state site. The search page gave SearchSystems no description of its own when read, so there is nothing to add here beyond the address; a name that returns a listing there is a name with money or property waiting in the state's hands.
A criminal history check from the BCI
The Bureau of Criminal Investigation is the state's central repository for criminal history information: records of arrests and prosecutions, submitted by local law enforcement, state's attorneys, the courts and parole and probation. The Attorney General's criminal history records page says the system exists for use by law enforcement, the courts and the public, and that a criminal history record check is much more detailed and accurate than a regular background check. The request itself is made through the page's link to request a criminal history record check. The Attorney General's office takes general inquiries at (701) 328-2210.
What the open records law lets anyone ask for
The Attorney General's open records and meetings page describes North Dakota's sunshine laws: all government records and meetings are open to the public unless a specific law authorizes a record to be withheld or a meeting to be closed. The laws reach all state and local government agencies, rural fire and ambulance districts, public schools, private businesses or nonprofits supported by or spending public funds, and contractors that provide services in place of a public entity. Anyone has the right to attend a public entity's meetings and to obtain copies of its records, regardless of where they live, which means an out of state searcher has the same standing as a resident. The courts are not subject to these laws; access to court records is explained on the Supreme Court's website, and in practice through the case search above.
Voter information: by address, not by name
North Dakota does not offer a public lookup of voters by name. The Secretary of State's election site, vote.nd.gov, finds voting information by house number and ZIP code: the polling place and a sample ballot for that address. The site notes that an address change filed with the Department of Transportation may take two business days to reach the Central Voter File. The older voter information portal at vip.sos.nd.gov says it is no longer active and points to vote.nd.gov.
North Dakota: courts, prison lookup and the death index
A North Dakota search runs in a fixed order because each system answers a different question. The court search answers whether the person has been sued, charged, divorced or ticketed, and names the county. The DOCR lookup and the offender registry answer where the person is held or registered today. The Board of Medicine and FirstStop answer whether the name belongs to a licensed professional or to the officer of a business. The Public Death Index answers whether the person has died in North Dakota. For a current address, the county is where the records live: deeds, mortgages and assessor rolls sit with the county recorder and the county director of tax equalization, and the North Dakota county pages on SearchSystems list the official sites for each county.
Commercial people search sites sell reports built from the same public sources described on this page, matched by software and often out of date. Whatever such a report claims about a North Dakotan, the court search, the registry and the death index above are where the claim is checked.
County Starting Points
Questions about finding someone in North Dakota
Every North Dakota Guide
The full set: arrest records, background checks, inmate search, offender registry, birth certificates, unclaimed property, business search, and the North Dakota records law that opens every door on this list.