By Adam Allington, St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis – More Missouri sex offenders are complying with the state's 15-year-old registry law. That's the conclusion of a review State Auditor Susan Montee released Wednesday.
In 2002, 36 percent of Missouri's sex offenders were not on the list. That figure has dropped to 7 percent.
Montee says the high rate of non-compliance was the result of a state Supreme Court ruling that found that offenders convicted before 1995 were not required to register. That ruling was later overturned, but Montee says there are new challenges.
"Now, we're faced with a challenge of having to re-register those people that we had been tracking, and there's still about 1,500 of them out there that we have to find," Montee says.
St. Louis ranks the highest among Missouri cities in non-registration. The audit found that of 900 sex offenders living in St. Louis, 182 are not on the list.