Children and Incarceration in North Dakota: A Complete Guide

North Dakota's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not call the people in its facilities inmates. It calls them residents. The shift in language is not accidental. As a UND medical faculty member who works with the DOCR explained: that is what they used to call people who are incarcerated, but now they are residents. The word choice reflects a philosophy that the DOCR's prison industries program makes explicit: 97 percent of the people in North Dakota's correctional facilities will return to their communities. The job of the system is to prepare them to return successfully.

I went into the federal system, not the North Dakota DOCR. I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20. What I know from 66 months is that what a system believes about the people inside it shapes what those people can believe about themselves. North Dakota has chosen to believe, and to say, that the people inside its facilities are residents, not warehoused inmates. That belief and the 97 percent statistic point toward the same truth: the children waiting at home are going to see their parent come through the door again. Both parents need to be building what that moment looks like, right now.

North Dakota's facilities and geography

North Dakota is a large state with a small prison system. The DOCR operates four adult facilities: the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck, the James River Correctional Center in Jamestown, the Missouri River Correctional Center in Bismarck, and the Dakota Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Center in New England. Male operational capacity is 1,624. Female capacity is roughly 262.

Bismarck, the capital, anchors the western-central part of the state. NDSP and MRCC are both in Bismarck. JRCC is in Jamestown, 95 miles east of Bismarck. The Women's facility in New England is in Hettinger County, nearly 100 miles southwest of Bismarck, in a corner of the state that is agricultural, remote, and far from Fargo and Grand Forks, where a significant portion of the state's urban population lives.

Fargo is 200 miles east of Bismarck and the largest city in the state. A family in Fargo with a parent at the State Penitentiary is making a 3-hour drive across the plains. A family in Fargo with a mother at the Women's Correctional facility in New England is making a 4-hour drive to the southwest. The distances are real. The prairie between Fargo and Bismarck, and between Bismarck and New England, is genuinely empty in the way that only Great Plains states achieve.

Native American incarceration in North Dakota

North Dakota has a documented and significant racial disparity in incarceration. Native American people are about 5 percent of the state's general population but account for roughly 20 to 22 percent of the people in its prisons and jails. They are incarcerated at 6.2 times the rate of white people. This disparity is not a feature of any single incident or policy but of decades of structural inequality across the state's reservations and urban Native communities in Bismarck and Fargo.

For the children of Native American parents inside North Dakota's facilities, this means that the experience of having an incarcerated parent often exists within a larger community context where incarceration has touched multiple families and multiple generations. Some of those communities are on reservations that are hours from the facilities in Bismarck and Jamestown. The shared context does not reduce the individual impact on the child. The 9-year-old who needs to hear from their parent that none of this is their fault needs to hear it regardless of how many other children in the community have the same story. Each child carries it privately. Each child needs the incarcerated parent to address them directly.

The DOCR's use of the word "residents" is meaningful in this context. It reflects a system that has chosen to see the people inside its facilities as people, not categories. The families of Native American residents in North Dakota's facilities deserve the same clarity from both parents: direct engagement, consistent contact, and the protection of the children from the adult conflict between them.

The decision both parents make when 97 percent are coming home

97 percent. The state's Rough Rider Industries program puts it on their website as a reason to engage with what they do: almost everyone inside a North Dakota facility will return to the community. The choices both parents make during the sentence are building what that return looks like.

My wife never said a word against me to our six children during 66 months. She had every reason. She had six kids in a situation I had created. She chose to let them love me without penalty. What I have with my adult children today is the direct result of that choice. When I came home, I came home to a family that had kept the door open.

The parent inside a North Dakota facility carries the same obligation from the inside. The phone call, the video visit, the letter: all of those are the contact the child gets. Use them to be genuinely present. Ask what happened at school. Remember what the child said last time. Ask about it by name this time. Build the relationship that the 97 percent return will come home to.

What the ages mean in North Dakota

My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in.

The 9-year-old in Bismarck or Fargo or Grand Forks or on one of the state's reservations whose parent is inside NDSP or JRCC or MRCC needs the same thing every 9-year-old in this series needs: to hear directly and often that none of what happened is their fault. Children under 10 build private explanations for a parent's absence. The explanation they most often reach is that they caused it. That belief does not dissolve with time. It settles in and shapes how the child understands themselves for years. Call on a consistent schedule. Say it on every call: this is not your fault. I love you. I am still your parent.

The 11 and 12-year-old in North Dakota is navigating middle school in a state with distinct geographic and cultural communities, from the oil-country west to the Red River Valley to the reservation communities. A parent's incarceration at this age carries weight in all of those contexts, and the weight is different in a small community where everyone knows everyone than in a larger city where anonymity is possible. The incarcerated parent who calls consistently, who uses the phone and the DOCR correspondence system to stay connected, who asks real questions and remembers the answers, is doing the parenting that the distance across the North Dakota plains is trying to prevent.

The 15-year-old has formed a picture of both parents. They evaluate the calls for authenticity. A parent who calls to lecture is losing the teenager's engagement with each instruction delivered. A parent who calls to listen, who asks about the teenager's actual life and stays with the answers, will keep the relationship. Ask more than you tell.

The 18 and 20-year-old is an adult making choices. Show up as someone worth choosing.

What the outside parent carries in North Dakota

The outside parent in North Dakota is managing children, a household, and the logistics of incarceration in a state where the drives between cities can be 3 to 4 hours across empty plains. They are making that drive when it is possible and navigating the DOCR visitation process, which requires advance scheduling and adherence to visiting block times.

What they need from the incarcerated parent is acknowledgment. One call where the person inside names what they see the outside parent carrying and says thank you for it, in direct and genuine terms, is worth more than anything else that call could contain. My wife carried six children through 66 months and deserved to hear that I saw it. I said so as often as the access allowed.

For the outside parent in North Dakota: the 97 percent statistic means the parent is coming home. What the children carry about that parent during the sentence, and what relationship they are prepared to receive the parent back into, is shaped by what you say about the incarcerated parent in front of them. Speak carefully. My wife never said anything against me. What I have now is what that made possible.

How communication works in North Dakota

Phone services at North Dakota DOCR facilities are provided through the DOCR's contracted telephone vendor. Contact the specific facility or check docr.nd.gov for current provider information. FCC rate caps effective April 6, 2026, limit calls to $0.11 per minute at prisons and large jails plus a facility fee.

For correspondence: mail to NDSP should be addressed to the resident name and number at P.O. Box 5521, Bismarck ND 58506-5521. Mail to JRCC and JRMU: Resident Name and Number, James River Correctional Center, 2521 Circle Drive, Jamestown ND 58401. Maximum 30 pictures per envelope; maximum 10 non-personal correspondence pages per envelope. Return address must match the sender; mail from a different individual than listed on the return address will be rejected.

For in-person visitation: visiting schedules vary by facility and change periodically. At JRCC, general visitation includes Tuesday, Thursday, and weekend blocks; some adult-only periods apply when no one under 18 may visit. Visitors bringing small or infant children may bring necessary supplies. Contact the facility directly or check docr.nd.gov for current schedules and visitor registration requirements.

DOCR "Resident Lookup" tool: docr.nd.gov. DOCR headquarters: Bismarck, ND; (701) 328-6390.

Key facility addresses: North Dakota State Penitentiary: 3100 Railroad Avenue, Bismarck ND 58506; (701) 328-6100. James River Correctional Center: 2521 Circle Drive, Jamestown ND 58401; (701) 253-3660. Dakota Women's Correctional and Rehabilitation Center: 440 McKenzie Street, New England ND 58647; (701) 579-5100. Missouri River Correctional Center (minimum): 1800 48th Ave SW, Bismarck ND; (701) 328-9696.

Federal inmates in North Dakota fall under BOP jurisdiction. BOP communication uses TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS and TRUFONE for phone. FCC rate caps apply; First Step Act programming offers 300 free minutes per month.

Where this leaves you

North Dakota calls the people in its facilities residents. It operates Rough Rider Industries on the premise that 97 percent of them will return to their communities. It has built a system that says, in its language and its programming, that the people inside are preparing to come back out.

The children waiting at home in Fargo or Bismarck or on the standing reservations are waiting for someone who is, statistically, going to come back to them. The question both parents face is the same question it is in every state: what does that person come back as, and what relationship is waiting for them?

The incarcerated parent who calls consistently, who uses the DOCR's correspondence system to send pictures within the 30-picture rule, who sends letters to the specific child about the specific life that child is living, who tells the 9-year-old it is not their fault, who tracks the middle schooler week by week, who listens to the teenager: that parent is building what they come home to. The outside parent who keeps the door open, who speaks carefully about the incarcerated parent in front of children who are listening, is doing the same. 97 percent are coming back. Build what they return to.