A Childhood Without Safety: Growing Up Inside the Prison System
What happens when a child grows up without safety—and the system responds with punishment instead of protection?
In this episode of The Shadow Sessions, host Hiba Balfaqih sits down with Sonny Van Cleaveland, whose life was shaped by incarceration before it was shaped by care. By the age of seven, Sonny was already inside the justice system. By sixteen, he was placed in an adult prison that became one of the most violent facilities in Michigan within its first month.
This conversation exposes how early trauma, chronic threat, and institutional violence shape identity. Violence wasn’t…
The skinny
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