Washington gives the public two tools worth knowing first: a statewide court search engine whose Person Search finds every case a litigant's name is attached to, across municipal, district, superior and appellate courts, and a State Patrol conviction check that anyone can run for $11 a name, because the Criminal Records Privacy Act lets conviction data go out without restriction. The Department of Corrections lists who is in prison today, the registry publishes Level II and III offenders and keeps Level I off the site, and the Department of Health issues six kinds of vital certificate.
The order to use: the courts' Person Search for cases, the DOC search and the registry for status, the credential search and the corporations system for a livelihood, a WATCH check when the conviction record itself is wanted, then the county offices for deeds and parcels, listed on the Washington county pages at SearchSystems, with the Department of Health for certificates.
- Court cases, by litigant name: the Washington Courts search engine, with Case Search, Person Search, Attorney Search and Find My Court Date.
- Convictions, $11 a name: the State Patrol's WATCH background check by name and date of birth.
- In prison, and wanted: the Department of Corrections Incarcerated Search, with its warrant and wanted lists.
- Registered offenders: the Washington Sex Offender Public Registry, explained by the sheriffs and police chiefs.
- Licenses, companies, voters and certificates: the Department of Health Provider Credential or Facility Search, the Corporations and Charities Filing System, VoteWA and vital records.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Washington's own systems: the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, the Washington State Patrol, the Washington State Department of Corrections, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the Washington State Department of Health, the Washington Secretary of State, the Washington Department of Revenue, the Washington State Attorney General, each read on October 13, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The courts' search engine: a Person Search across every court level
The Administrative Office of the Courts runs a search engine for cases filed in the municipal, district, superior and appellate courts of Washington, with four doors: Case Search by court level, Person Search to find cases associated with a person's name as a litigant, whether defendant, petitioner or respondent, Attorney Search for district and municipal court proceedings tied to a bar number, and Find My Court Date for a district or municipal court appearance. Clerks at each court enter the case information and the search engine updates approximately twenty four hours later; the courts' Name and Case Search page puts the refresh at every 24 hours at 3:00 am. The results are reference material and not the official court record, copies of case file documents are not on the search site and must be ordered from the court of record, and the site's own questions answer No to whether a case outcome can be found there and No to whether the results show someone's criminal record, which the State Patrol keeps.
When it was read, the site carried a notice that some case information may not display correctly, including dockets, judgments or document links, and that case status shown may be inaccurate, with a referral to the court of record or to Odyssey Portal, re:Search and JIS Link for complete and current records. The site then names where each court's most current information lives: the Odyssey Portal for thirty seven superior courts from Adams to Yakima, King County Superior Court's own site, Pierce County's LINX, the King County and Kitsap County district courts' sites, the Seattle and Spokane municipal courts' portals, and re:Search for a long list of other municipal and district courts, with Supreme Court and Court of Appeals documents on the appellate courts' public access portals. The Accept button records that the user must view the court case record to determine a person's involvement in a case, and the agencies guarantee neither accuracy, currency nor the identity of any person whose name appears. The Washington county pages at SearchSystems list the court of record for each county.
WATCH: an $11 conviction check anyone can run
The Washington State Patrol's Identification and Criminal History Section runs WATCH as the official internet source for criminal history conviction records for the state of Washington only, built from records sent by courts and criminal justice agencies across the state. It holds conviction information, arrests less than one year old with dispositions pending, and information on registered sex and kidnap offenders; under RCW 10.97.030, 13.50.260 and 9.94A.640, vacated cases, sealed records and misdemeanor traffic violations are left out of public results, and the Criminal Records Privacy Act, RCW 10.97, lets conviction data be released without restriction while keeping non conviction information from the public. A name and date of birth search costs $11 for each name searched, whatever the outcome, and a notary request $15, paid by card or a pre established account; the law requires the site to keep the name of the person requesting the report, the target of the search and the date.
A search returns a candidate list of records that match or closely match, a NO RECORD or NO EXACT MATCH FOUND response, a possible DUPLICATE MATCH where two or more exact name or date of birth matches exist, an Exact Match Available flag, or Pending, meaning the result awaits State Patrol review within 24 to 48 hours. The patrol warns that it cannot guarantee a record relates to the person sought, since name and date of birth searches are not always accurate, and that fingerprint verification is the only way to link someone positively to a record. Technical questions go to (360) 534-2000, option 2.
The Department of Corrections: who is inside, and who is wanted
The Department of Corrections publishes information about currently incarcerated individuals through its Incarcerated Search, entered by DOC number or name, with no special characters other than hyphens and apostrophes; each result lists the DOC number, name, age, location and housing assignment code, and the page itself listed the population alphabetically, page by page, when read. The department says to contact it for information about current and former incarcerated individuals and supervisees, which is how a release or a supervision question gets answered, and the same records section carries a Warrant Search, Secretary's Warrants and a Wanted for Arrest list with a Tips and Leads page. Washington's statewide Victim Notification Network, WA VINE, registers a user for notice of custody status changes and protective order status changes.
The registry: Level II and III published, Level I kept by the sheriff
The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs explains the Washington Sex Offender Public Registry at wasor.org, alongside the national site. Registration is governed by Chapter 9A.44 RCW, with RCW 9A.44.128 defining the offenses that require it, and since July 23, 2023 adults and juveniles have had different requirements: adults convicted of a Class A, Class B or Class C felony, or some gross misdemeanors, register for life, fifteen years or ten years respectively, and offenders register in person at the sheriff's office in their county of residence. Under RCW 4.24.550 the state publishes only Level II and Level III offenders, those assessed as a moderate or high risk to reoffend, plus Level I offenders who are out of compliance or transient; a Level I offender assessed as low risk is not on the website, and the local sheriff's office provides information on specific Level I offenders on request. The registry carries a button to submit a tip or correction for an offender, and the association notes that not every city or community mails notification flyers, which depend on each agency and on the notification radius for a particular offender.
Health care credentials, after the HELMS upgrade
The Department of Health's Provider Credential or Facility Search is searched by credential number, individual name or business name, draws directly from the department's database with daily updates, serves as a primary source for verification of credentials, and provides true and correct copies of legal disciplinary actions taken after July 1998, which the department considers certified; actions before July 1998 go through the Customer Service Center at 360-236-4700. The HELMS Release 3 upgrades launched on March 24, 2026 brought fewer required fields for broad searches with more options to narrow them, multiple searches on one page, provider detail pages with credential specific information such as endorsements and open and closed enforcement case counts, and searchable educational programs. Nursing credentials, ARNP, RN and LPN, are still verified first through NURSYS, Home Care Aide credentials still use an exact match tool under RCW 42.56.640, every search still requires a CAPTCHA against automated mining, and high volume users are sent to the state's Open Data Portal, which carries the same source information with daily downloads. On July 1, 2026 regulatory authority for certified and registered nursing assistants moved to the Washington State Board of Nursing. The search application itself answered an automated read with a loading error, so the terms above come from the department's page about it.
Companies: the Corporations and Charities Filing System and the archives
The Secretary of State's Corporations and Charities Filing System gave an automated reader nothing but its name, Corporations and Charities System, so its search runs in the browser. The Secretary of State's own pages say that business information filed with the office is available for public view using the Corporation Search, that a user account is needed only for filing, subscriptions and notifications and is not tied to a specific business, and that entities inactive for more than 10 years are no longer in the online system and are searched instead through the Washington State Archives Digital Archives. New laws affecting submissions to the Corporations and Charities Division took effect June 11, 2026, among them a clarification that a foreign business entity with a Washington based remote worker is not, by that alone, doing business in the state, and the division moved its in person services to 243 Israel Road SE in Tumwater.
VoteWA: a portal for the voter, not a lookup for the public
VoteWA is a sign in portal: a registered voter enters a first name and last name that must match the registration and a date of birth, behind a reCAPTCHA, and reaches their own voter profile and ballot information; a name and date of birth that do not match the records are sent to the county elections office. Every registered Washington voter automatically has an account, and someone not registered has no access at all, so the portal confirms a registration only for the person signing in, not for a third party looking one up.
Vital records: six kinds of certificate from the Department of Health
The Department of Health issues certified copies of births, deaths, stillbirths, fetal deaths, marriages and divorces that took place in the state of Washington, ordered through its Vital Records pages, through VitalChek, which it names as its only contracted and approved third party vendor, or by phone at 1-866-687-1464, with order status by email to contactchs@doh.wa.gov or at 360-236-4300. The department warns that other third party companies charge high fees to process or help apply for certificates and points the unsatisfied to a consumer complaint with the Attorney General. The Center for Health Statistics takes mail at PO Box 9709, Olympia, WA 98507 and sees visitors by appointment only at 111 Israel Road SE in Tumwater. The Department of Revenue's unclaimed property site answered an automated read with its title, WA Unclaimed Property, and nothing else, so its search is on the site.
The Address Confidentiality Program, 35 years on
The Secretary of State's Address Confidentiality Program, created by legislation in 1991 and marking 35 years, gives survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or trafficking, and criminal justice affiliates, election officials and protected health care workers targeted for threats or harassment, a substitute address that state, county and city agencies accept instead of a residential address when creating records, with first class mail forwarded and the Secretary of State serving as agent for service of process; the program also protects two usually public records, voting and marriage records. Applicants meet an advocate designated as an Application Assistant to create or review a safety plan before applying, participants are certified for four years, and under RCW 40.24.050 state and local agencies, law enforcement and the courts use the substitute address for new public records. The office discloses a real address only to a valid court order or a formal law enforcement request signed by the agency's chief officer, and a participant's actual street address, city, county, voting precinct and mailing address are confidential, while participation status, the substitute address, the state of residence and records created before enrollment are not. The program answers at 1 (800) 822-1065 and (360) 753-2972, and service of process on a participant goes to the Secretary of State with two copies and a $25.00 check.
The Public Records Act and the Attorney General's manual
The Washington State Attorney General's Open Government Resource Manual, in its 2016 edition last revised October 31, 2016, describes the state's sunshine laws in an introduction and three chapters, two on the Public Records Act, its general and procedural provisions and its exemptions, and one on the Open Public Meetings Act, with summaries of and links to the statutes, court decisions, formal Attorney General Opinions and the Public Records Act Model Rules. The office notes that decisions and statutes since 2016 may change what the manual summarizes, and keeps training and other open government material on its site. The manual is the reference for a request under the Public Records Act, including one to the county offices listed on the Washington county pages at SearchSystems.
Washington: Person Search, WATCH and the court of record
Washington's Person Search ties a name to its cases across every court level, with a day's lag and a referral to the court of record for the file, and WATCH sells the conviction record itself to anyone for $11. The DOC search and the registry settle today's status, with Level I offenders held by the sheriff, the credential search and the corporations system cover a livelihood, and the Department of Health issues six kinds of certificate. Deeds, parcels and the court of record are county matters, listed on the Washington county pages at SearchSystems.
Paid people search sites build their Washington reports from these same records and resell what WATCH sells for $11; the State Patrol's own warning that only fingerprints link a person to a record applies to them twice over.
County Starting Points
Questions about finding someone in Washington
Every Washington Guide
The full set: arrest records, background checks, inmate search, offender registry, birth certificates, unclaimed property, business search, and the Washington records law that opens every door on this list.