Florida is misspending resources, missing opportunities and costing lives.

The same concerning statistic came up in two stories this week. The statistic is that Florida ranked 51st out of 52 jurisdictions in the US for total state mental health spending — behind 49 states and Washington, D.C. (the only jurisdiction that spent less, per capita, is Puerto Rico). The two stories were the Parkland massacre and the sentencing of Donald Smith, who abducted and killed Cherish Perrywinkle.

The Parkland shooter was reported to the FBI days before the massacre, police were called to his home 39 times over a seven-year period. Donald Smith had been in and out of prison since the 70s. His 40 year criminal history spanned dozens of pages, including convictions for sexual offenses in 1977, 1993, 2009 and 2012.

The state will have you believe that everyone who suffers from mental illness is Nikolas Cruz and every sex offender is Donald Smith. Nothing is farther from the truth. According to the US Government National Institute of Health, approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S.—9.8 million, or 4.0%—experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. There are over 900,000 registered sex offenders in the US, over 70,000 in Florida. Very few who suffer from mental illness will go on to commit violent crimes and very few registered sex offenders will re-offend. Our state is simply missing the mark on identifying which ones need their focus.

In the context of sex offenders; why are there seventy thousand individuals on the Florida registry when fewer than half actually live in the community? Why does the state keep a public registry including people who moved away, were deported or died? Why do lawmakers impose and police enforce residency restrictions and curfews on registrants that control their movement and where they sleep between 10PM and 6AM, which is the time when children are home and in bed? Why are the same exact restrictions and compliance checks done on someone who has a decades-old, one-time, non-violent offense as were done for Donald Smith?

There are tools the state can use, such as risk-assessments and psycho-sexual evaluations,  to identify which “ones” require attention, but the state chooses not to use them. These tools can determine, with accurate precision, which individuals need attention and which don’t, but the state won’t invest in these tools and won’t implement a risk-based registry because it’s costly. Instead, our state has cast such a wide net and implemented so many irrational obstacles, that their focus is diluted and resources are misspent. The dangerous blend in with the benign and people die. Wake up, Florida… that’s more costly!

If our state doesn’t re-focus their attention and resources on where they are needed and stop wasting so much time and money punishing low-risk offenders for the rest of their lives, they will keep missing the Nikolas Cruz and Donald Smiths of the world.