Report: Police Don’t Know Location of 1,300 Missouri Sex Offenders

An audit found that the whereabouts of 1,259 registered sex offenders in Missouri are unknown, the Associated Press reports. While Missouri law requires sex offenders to “register their names, addresses and other information with their county law enforcement,” about eight percent of the 16,000 sex offenders in the state have not been accounted for—including hundreds of offenders in the “most dangerous category.” Auditor Nicole Galloway said the problem stems from “inadequate enforcement of the registration requirement at the local level.” “As it stands the sex offender registry really provides a false sense of security,” Galloway said at a St. Louis news conference. Other states have similar issues. An August audit found 2,735 offenders in Wisconsin were unaccounted for, and a Massachusetts audit last year found that the state had no address on file for almost 1,800 offenders.