Insurance License Hub

The South Dakota Runner license

Runner

Works for a bail bondsman: gets the defendant to court, keeps them under surveillance, and helps bring them back if they run. South Dakota licenses it separately from the bondsman it works for, and the same felony disqualification reaches it.

Course

None

This license has no pre-licensing course route.

Ways in

1

It requires the state exam.

Exam

$85

Required.

Every way to qualify

  1. Route 1 Clear the background check, then pass the bail bonds paper

    State exam required

    What the license covers

    • SDCL 58-22-1(5): a runner is a person employed by a bail bondsman to assist in presenting the defendant in court when required, or to assist in the apprehension and surrender of the defendant to the court, or to keep the defendant under necessary surveillance. The section adds that this does not affect a bail bondsman's right to hire counsel or ask the assistance of law enforcement officers.

    and the examination

    • Pearson's SD Bail Bonds Producer paper, series code InsSD_BB49, fifty questions in sixty minutes at $85 and available only in a test centre, never online. Half of it is South Dakota law and the rest is bail bond principles, practices and terminology.

    and age and residence

    • Twenty-one years of age and a resident of South Dakota for at least one year. Pearson's handbook prints both as prerequisites to the examination itself rather than to the license, so a candidate who fails either cannot even sit the paper.

    and the background check

    • An Authorization form sent with payment to the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, under SDCL 58-22-14. Fingerprints certified by an authorized law enforcement officer are recommended and are not a prerequisite, which the handbook says in terms.

    SDCL 58-22-1 defines the four kinds of bail licensee South Dakota issues and this file is one of them. 58-22-3 disqualifies a class of applicant outright and makes it a Class 6 felony to be one: jailers, police officers, committing magistrates, magistrate court judges, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, constables, and anybody with the power to arrest or any control over federal, state, county or municipal prisoners. The runner is defined outside the definition of bail bondsman at 58-22-1(1A), so it is a fourth license rather than a variety of the other three, and 58-22-3 names runners alongside bail bondspersons in its felony disqualification. South Dakota asks no pre-licensing course for it, which puts it beside its producer lines and against Missouri's twenty-four hours and Georgia's sixteen.

    Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-20

No national seller sells a course for this license. Aceable does not sell South Dakota at all. No course is required. Nothing anywhere prepares somebody for a license whose work is getting a defendant back to court.