Virtually real.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Briefly Noted - Crime and Punishment Museum in Washington D.C. - Brief article

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Last year America's Most Wanted host John Walsh and amusement park developer John Morgan opened up the Crime and Punishment Museum in Washington, D.C. It's fitting that Walsh now films episodes of his program there, because the museum is more glitz and show biz than education or history. It manages both to glamorize notorious killers and to perpetuate law-and-order cliches. This is a place that uses a full-scale model of a police station to prove that "crime doesn't pay."

Artifacts of celebrated crooks--John Dillinger's getaway car, a recreation of AI Capone's jail cell--sit next to...