National Museum of Crime and Punishment
 Location within Washington, D.C.
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| Established | May 23, 2008 |
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| Dissolved | September 30, 2015 |
| Location |
575 7th Street NW Washington, DC |
| Coordinates | 38°53′49″N 77°01′18″W / 38.897°N 77.0216°W |
| Public transit access |
 Gallery Place-Chinatown
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| Website | www.crimemuseum.org |
575 7th Street NW
The National Museum of Crime and Punishment, also known as the Crime Museum, was a privately owned museum dedicated to the history of criminology and penology in the United States. It was located in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C., half a block south of the Gallery Place station. It is now operated as Alcatraz East, a museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
The museum was built by Orlando businessman John Morgan, in partnership with John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, at a cost of $21 million, and opened in May 2008. Unlike most museums in Washington, DC, the Crime Museum was a for-profit enterprise. It was forced to close in September 2015 by its building's owners after it failed to meet sales targets specified in its lease.
More than 700 artifacts in 28,000 square feet (2,600 m2) of exhibition space related the history of crime, and its consequences, in America and American popular culture. The museum featured exhibits on colonial crime, pirates, Wild West outlaws, gangsters, the Mob, mass murderers, and white collar criminals. Twenty-eight interactive stations included the high-speed police chase simulators used in the training of law enforcement officers, and a Firearms Training Simulator (F.A.T.S.) similar to that utilized by the FBI.
The main floor was devoted to a staged crime scene investigation of a simulated murder. Visitors to the museum were guided through the process of solving the crime through forensic science techniques, including ballistics, blood analysis, finger printing and foot printing, and dental and facial reconstruction.
The museum included a mock police station with a booking room, celebrity mug shots, police line-up, lie detector test, prisoners' art and jail-made weapons and escape tools, and a re-creation of the jail cell of Al Capone at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. A capital punishment room offered a re-creation of a guillotine and gas chamber, along with an authentic lethal injection machine from the state prison in Smyrna, Delaware, and an electric chair from the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville which was used for 125 executions.
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Wikipedia