Breaking Point: When the Criminal Justice System Fails - Hardcover

Robin Dahlberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3969002222 ISBN 13: 9783969002223

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag, 2026

Synopsis

Created in collaboration with six exonerees, Breaking Point examines how guilt-presumptive, coercive interrogation practices can compel innocent people to admit crimes they did not commit.
False confessions are often dismissed as anomalies or personal failings, yet they remain one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the United States. Research consistently shows that coercive police tactics are a decisive factor. Once an innocent person is wrongly identified as a prime suspect, law enforcement frequently subjects them to interrogations aimed at extracting a confession rather than discovering the truth.
These methods are systematic: isolation in unfamiliar environments, prolonged and confrontational questioning, deception about evidence, fake polygraph tests, and implied promises of leniency. Under sustained psychological pressure, compliance can feel like the only way forward. Young people, individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and those with deep respect for authority are particularly vulnerable.
Breaking Point centers on the voices of the collaborating exonerees— Jeffrey Deskovic, Vanessa Gathers, Brian Halsey, Eddie Lowery, Christopher Ochoa, and Raymond Santana—each of whom falsely confessed and spent years, in some cases decades, in prison. The reader is invited to enter the interrogation room alongside them, to confront the fear, tension, and discomfort they endured, and to challenge our assumptions about guilt, authority, and truth.
The book’s design reinforces the psychological intensity of the interrogation room. Rendered in stark black and white, it combines altered stills from police video recordings, quiet still lifes, urban landscapes, and handwritten reflections from the exonerees. Striking close-up portraits and staged interrogation scenes sit alongside original interrogation materials, court documents, and media coverage of the trials and subsequent exonerations.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Dahlberg is an award-winning visual artist whose work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the New York Public Library. Trained as an attorney, she spent twenty years in the National Legal Department of the American Civil Liberties Union, designing and leading campaigns to reform the U.S. criminal justice system.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3969002222
• ISBN 13: 9783969002223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184