Ariana Cook was in a bad place in 2020. She was hooked on hard drugs and in love with a “master manipulator.”
“I just knew I was gonna marry him and be a hood-rich junkie for the rest of my life,” she said. “I had no care in the world of regaining contact with anyone who actually cared about and loved me.”
In July 2020, she grabbed a hammer and other items to kill Wichitan Roy Hayden. Cook didn’t kill Hayden, multiple people were accused, but she stood by as he reportedly begged for his life.
She suspects she would have been killed if she tried to stop the 2020 murder, but if she could go back, she would have made different choices. Cook said she regrets her mistake with every fiber of her being, and said she was young and reckless.
That doesn’t excuse her crime, she said, but she has grown so much since it happened.
“I still feel like I’m just a kid,” Cook told The Beacon. “I turn 25 in three months. I ask you lawmakers to think about if I was your daughter. What would you do then?”
That’s a question lawmakers might answer in the 2025 Kansas Legislature session. Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, will introduce the Second Look Act. The bill would resentence eligible inmates after a certain amount of time in prison. It doesn’t guarantee their release, just a second look at the length of their sentence.
The current proposal says:
- People who broke the law before age 25 can be resentenced after 10 years.
- Minors who broke the law can be resentenced after 10 years served.
- People who broke the law after age 25 can be resentenced after 15 years.
- People who broke the law after age 50 can be resentenced after 10 years.
- Military veterans with PTSD that was never factored into the crime can be resentenced after 10 years.
- If a law changed but sentences were not retroactive, that person could be resentenced.
- And a person who has completed all rehabilitative programs assigned to them can be resentenced after 10 years.
The science behind crime and aging
Kevin Steinmetz, a professor of criminology at Kansas State University, said youth are more impulsive and their brains just aren’t fully developed. They are less likely to understand or think about long-term consequences.
Having a steady job and house or apartment can reduce someone’s likelihood of reoffending. Yet minors or people in their early 20s aren’t really thinking about how a criminal record will cost them employment opportunities or get them rejected from apartments, for example.
The brain doesn’t fully develop until someone is at least in their mid-to-late 20s, and the part of the brain responsible for decision-making is the last thing to develop.
Steinmetz said those young offenders will eventually realize their mistakes.
“Kids are thrill-seeking, and a lot of crime, unfortunately, is fun,” he said. “They’re not thinking about the consequences of that as we do it.”
Nationwide, people in their 20s commit the most crimes, according to FBI data. The data doesn’t sort by people younger than 25 like the Second Look Act, but the older people got the fewer crimes they committed, the data said.
People younger than 29 accounted for 42% of the crime in the country, according to the FBI, while people older than 40 were only 21% of offenders.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that arrests for violent offenses increase between age 10 and 22. Those rates stabilize from age 23 to 29 and then drop off.
Steinmetz said these trends don’t apply to everyone and there will always be outliers. But kids can age out of crime as they grow older.
Susan Whitford, program director of criminal justice at the University of Kansas, agrees. She said completing job training and getting a GED, higher education, mental health counseling and substance use programs are better indicators of potential recidivism than the length of someone’s sentence.
“It’s not going to be perfect,” she said.
“Nothing that deals with human behavior is perfect,” Whitford said. But resentencing someone after seeing how they developed is smarter than keeping someone locked up because that’s what their sentence was at the time of their crime, she added.
What would inmates do with a second chance?
Cook said she’s hoping to take college courses. Ideally, she’d be a psychologist and she’d help other people in situations similar to hers.
“I want to make a difference in one way or another,” she said.
Cook now is closer to family and has a stronger support system. She still has more healing to do in prison, but she said there have been benefits to being locked up. She’s taking classes and found prison jobs she likes.
The Beacon talked with a handful of inmates under 30 serving longer sentences. Some said if they got out early, they’d spend time trying to teach and mentor younger Kansans. Some inmates found God. Others got away from bad influences.
Calvin Phillips used his time in prison to get a GED. Phillips, who is serving time for a kidnapping and murder charge, said he needed this time in prison.
Phillips was running away from home at 10 years old. His parents got divorced and he lost structure in his life. He’d eventually start running with gangs and selling drugs.
That doesn’t excuse his crimes, but Phillips said he is more mature after spending time in prison. He also has completed a handful of rehabilitative programs.
“Everybody don’t get it right the first time,” he said. “Especially when (we’re) young.”
It isn’t clear who could be eligible for the Second Look Act if it passed. The bill still needs hearings and could be amended. But generally speaking, longer sentences encompass harsher crimes, like murder, armed robbery or sex crimes.
Severe crimes can have a lower recidivism rate. A 2002 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 1% of murderers are rearrested for homicides. Another 17% were arrested for violent crimes.
Resentencing those inmates could be less politically palatable.
In Florida, its second-look law has more restrictions than the Kansas proposal. That bill was also bundled with other provisions, like banning life sentences for juvenile offenders. It passed the Florida Legislature unanimously.
Florida’s law only applies to people under 18, and it has exemptions for murder, sexual battery, armed robbery and other violent felonies. Juvenile offenders may have to wait up to 25 years for resentencing instead of 10 years like the Kansas proposal.
Other states that resentence young inmates
The Sentencing Project has tracked what states have some type of second-look legislation.
Six states and the District of Columbia allow courts to reconsider a sentence after a certain amount of time served. Four states allow prosecutors to request a sentence be reconsidered.
In total, 12 states have passed legislation allowing a second look. Some are deeply blue states such as California and New York. Others, like North Dakota and Florida, have a more conservative makeup like Kansas.
Key law enforcement lobbying groups in Kansas haven’t commented on any possible Second Look Act. No hearing has been officially held, so officials aren’t going to speculate on what could or couldn’t be.
They are open to a law like this, but they need to see what crimes someone could get sentenced on. The Kansas branch of Americans for Prosperity also likes the bill in theory, but it won’t be a top legislative issue.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
Copyright 2025 KCUR 89.3
