Their Crime, You Pay: Museum of Crime & Punishment

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DOES D.C. REALLY NEED another museum, you ask? Well, maybe.

But it didn't need the Museum of Crime and Punishment, which opens this weekend in partnership with John Walsh and "America's Most Wanted." The TV show will air from a studio inside the museum whenever Walsh isn't shooting on location, and the AMW call center will be located there no matter what.

Museums are a great place to take kids. I mean, otherwise wouldn't you just go to a bar or a tiger fight? The whole point of museums is that you have somewhere to take kids that doesn't make you want to smash your head into a glass door. Also, graduate students need employment somewhere.

Either way, do NOT take your children to this museum. Or anyone else's children. They will either be disturbingly enthralled by the methods of torture and execution on display, or they will have nightmares for a hundred million years. Try explaining to your sister why her kids that you took for some "grown-up time with Auntie Becky" are talking about a photo exhibit of some Wild West outlaw's dead body. That'll go over real well.

The museum is divided into several parts. The first, unsurprisingly, is crime, beginning with early (read: medieval) punishments, and working its way through pirates, the Wild West, the mob activity of the '20s (where you can see examples of Bonnie Parker's bad poetry, along with the bullet-ridden car used in the 1967 Faye Dunaway movie "Bonnie and Clyde"), all the way through to modern white-collar crime. Here, you can admire Frank Abagnale of "Catch Me If You Can" fame -- seriously, the guy got people to believe he was a doctor, a lawyer and an airplane pilot. How do you not admire that? He officially goes in the Badass Museum, a museum of all things I think are awesome. He will have a whole room. As will Lite Brite, polar bears, and Carmen Sandiego. Also in the White Collar Crime area: a computer that teaches you how to crack a safe.

Moving on, you'll hit a section on serial killers and presidential assassins. You can try a simulator that lets you attempt to hack into government files. I was rebuffed on every try. Perhaps the museum is trying to teach children that crime doesn't pay, unless you'd someday like to be featured in a museum.

Then it's on to punishment, by way of a scary fake alley covered in graffiti and shrouded in darkness. You emerge in a cold, gray approximation of a police station, where you are booked and taken to prison. Or rather, some prison cells that host displays on famous prisons, prison art, great escapes, and (the best part) prison tattoos. This is arranged on a wall, with panels sporting various common markings and what they mean. Just lift up the panel marked with the number "12," and you'll find out that prisoners with this tattoo belong to the Aryan Brotherhood! It's a fun way to learn! Just like Sesame Street, except Sesame Street never talked about the Mexican Mafia. Or maybe I missed those episodes.

The third and least interesting section is about the "good guys" -- police and FBI techniques for catching criminals. You follow a crime through collection and analysis of evidence, toxicology, ballistics and a bloodless autopsy. Try to solve it before the giant panels on the wall tell you what happened! Then move on to more giant panels, telling you how to protect yourself: "Safety for Women" and "Protect Your Bicycle" seemed important, or maybe it was just the driving TV music playing that made it seem that way.

For the ADHD kid in all of us, there are about a million activities and computer displays along the way that just scream "I will have a long line behind me constantly." There's a Wild West shooting range ($2 for two tokens buys you ten shots) where you'll shoulder a fake rifle and shoot at targets, including two bad guys, three bottles and a rooster that squawks authentically when you coldly put a bullet in its tiny blameless heart.

There are computer displays in which you prove how much you know about various serial killers ("What does 'BTK' stand for?") and a machine where you can fingerprint yourself. Don't forget to take the piece of cardboard they give you, which shows your print and tells you the time and the crime you committed -- I was booked for domestic violence! Maybe I should put that on a t-shirt or something.

In the "punishment" section, you can attempt to escape prison on a computer. A little man representing you has two minutes to run through a maze from his cell to the door. Though I made it through in time, the screen's jubilant "You're free" message soon transformed into "You're free ... for now." Buzzkill.

The best interactive section, of course, is police training. First, you attempt to drive a cop car through inclement weather, then you try to follow a suspicious white sedan. I blame the artificial car handling, but I managed to drive off the road and into a snowy ditch every single time. In fact, the whole experience has made me nervous for any Memorial Day road trips I might have planned. After that ultimate discouragement, move on to the guns. You play a giant video game S.W.A.T. team scenario in which you infiltrate a drug den and have to decide who to shoot. (Hint: the guy pointing the gun at you is the one to shoot.)

After that scintillating introduction to society's woes, the only thing left is to take a peek into the "America's Most Wanted" studio housed beneath the museum. John Walsh himself will be there about once a month (when they aren't filming on location). That'll spit you out into the gift shop, where you can buy chess sets and t-shirts to remind everyone of your trip to the museum.

Hopefully the "I Went to Washington D.C. for Two Weeks and Discovered There Were Only 10 Days Worth of Free Museums" shirts were on back order.

If you're in some sort of fraternity hazing period wherein you are forced to go to every single museum in D.C., head to this one today -- tickets are half price for opening day, so you'll just pay $9 (instead of $18), or $7.50 (instead of 15) for law enforcement, children ages 5-11 and seniors (60+).

Chldren under five are free, but the therapy bills cost extra.

» National Museum of Crime & Punishment, 575 7th St. NW; 202-393-1099 . (Gallery Place)

Photos courtesy National Museum of Crime & Punishment