Idaho Criminal Records

Idaho is one of the few states that never expunges an adult conviction. A withheld judgment can end in a dismissal, and an arrest that went nowhere can be wiped from the State Police file, but a conviction entered in an Idaho court stays in the court's record and in the state's for life. On the other side of the ledger the state is open: the Bureau of Criminal Identification sells a name check to anyone for $20, every court in the state posts to one free portal, the public records act spells out which parts of a police file can never be called investigatory, and the Ada County jail roster is timestamped to the minute. This page gives the Idaho rule and the Idaho search for each record, with government sources only.

The Idaho State Police's Bureau of Criminal Identification is "the State's central repository for criminal records, fingerprints, and crime statistics," and its criminal history page answers the question people ask their local police: "Can a local law enforcement agency do a statewide criminal records check for the public? Only BCI has the authorization to conduct a statewide record check for non-criminal justice licensure or employment screening purposes." The public check is the name based background check form: "A $20 processing fee must be included. Each field must be completed. A separate form must be used for each request," mailed to the Bureau, since, as its fingerprinting page warns, "due to security concerns, emailed requests will not be processed" and "requests with missing data or incorrect payment amounts will be returned." What comes back is the public portion of the repository under Idaho Code 67-3008: Idaho convictions and the arrests the act allows the Bureau to release while they are pending, by name and date of birth, expunged arrests left out, and nothing from any other state. It is a name search, and the criminal records page explains why a name match is a guess and what the fingerprint version adds.

Felonies and misdemeanors are tried in the district courts and the magistrate divisions beneath them, one for each of the 44 counties within seven judicial districts, and all of them post to the Idaho Supreme Court's iCourt Portal at mycourts.idaho.gov, where anyone can "find information on cases in Idaho's state trial courts" by name or case number, county by county, with the charges and dispositions, at no charge. The court's records request page draws the line between the index and the file: for "general information on a court case," "search our iCourt Portal at mycourts.idaho.gov"; for "records from a court case," "use a computer kiosk at one of Idaho's county courthouses, or submit a request to the clerk's office where the case was filed." The judiciary also publishes its court case and charge data in bulk for anyone to study. The county pages on this site link each courthouse. A background check company's "Idaho court record" is a copy of the portal on the date it was pulled, and the criminal records page explains what a copy misses.

Idaho's expungement statute is a single subsection, Idaho Code 67-3004(10): "Any person who was arrested or served a criminal summons" and never charged within a year, or whose charge was dismissed or ended in acquittal, may apply to the Bureau to have the arrest expunged from its record "and may have the official court file thereof sealed," through the Bureau's expungement application, which prints the subsection on its face. The subsection's last sentence is the Idaho rule for convictions: "This provision shall not apply to any dismissal granted pursuant to section 19-2604(1), Idaho Code." Section 19-2604 is the withheld judgment statute. A defendant sentenced to probation under a withheld judgment, or to probation on a judgment of conviction, may apply after completing it to have the plea set aside and the case dismissed, and the dismissal restores civil rights, but the case, the plea, the probation and the dismissal all stay on the court record and in the Bureau's file, and neither is sealed. Idaho has no statute that expunges or seals a conviction, so a "cleared" Idaho record is a dismissed one, visible as such. A copy sold before an arrest expungement keeps the arrest, and the federal rule on complete and up to date public records, on the criminal records page, is what forces the copy to catch up.

Idaho's Public Records Act exempts "investigatory records of a law enforcement agency" in Idaho Code 74-105, "under the conditions set forth in section 74-124," and 74-124 is built on the federal Freedom of Information Act's law enforcement exemption. It defines an investigatory record as "information with respect to an identifiable person or group of persons compiled by a law enforcement agency in the course of conducting an investigation of a specific act or omission," and then lists what an investigatory record "shall not include": the time, date, location and nature of a reported crime, accident or incident; the name, sex, age and address of a person arrested; the time, date and location of the arrest; the crime charged; and the identity of the investigating agency. Those items are public from the moment of the arrest, and the Attorney General's public records manual walks agencies through the rest. Who is in custody is posted by the county sheriffs; the Ada County Sheriff's inmate roster for Boise opens with a timestamp, "as of 6:10 PM on September 23, 2026 Mountain Time, the following people were housed in the Ada County jail for criminal offenses," which is the whole arrest-database problem in one line: the roster is a snapshot, and whoever copied it an hour earlier has a different list. State prisoners and people on supervision are in the Department of Correction's resident and client search. The arrest records page covers what happens to a booking after it leaves the roster.

An Idaho judgment recorded with the county recorder is a lien on the debtor's real property in that county, and under Idaho Code 10-1110 the lien continues for ten years from the date of the judgment unless the judgment is renewed, with a child support lien running "until ten (10) years after the death or emancipation of the last child for whom support is owed." Under 10-1111, "unless the judgment has been satisfied, and prior to the expiration of the lien created in section 10-1110, Idaho Code, or any renewal thereof," the court that entered the judgment "may, upon motion, renew such judgment by entry of an order renewing judgment," recorded like the original. The court records page covers where the judgment records and the county recorders' indexes are searched.

Idaho is a single federal judicial district under 28 U.S.C. 92, with one carve-out the statute states in its first line: "Idaho, exclusive of Yellowstone National Park, constitutes one judicial district," the park's Idaho strip belonging to the District of Wyoming under 28 U.S.C. 131. Court is held at Boise, Coeur d'Alene, Moscow and Pocatello. A federal criminal case from any of Idaho's 44 counties is on that one docket and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has an Idaho record: the Bureau's $20 name check answers it, by mail, from the public portion of the repository.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the iCourt Portal answers it free, statewide, and the clerk's office holds the file.

Whether a person was arrested: the name, age, address, time, place and charge are public under 74-124, and the investigation behind them may be withheld.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county sheriff's roster answers it, to the minute, and the Department of Correction's search for state prison and supervision.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged arrest is off the Bureau's file and the sealed court file, a dismissed conviction is still on both, a judgment lien lapses at ten years unless renewed, and a copy that predates an expungement is reached through the federal rule.