Nearly 200 Major Crimes Were Reported on U S. Cruise Ships Last Year. Heres the Most Common Offense
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Perhaps the weather is bad, or something mechanical goes wrong with the vessel. Cruise ships are equipped with advanced navigational equipment to avoid storms, and engine room contingencies allow onboard operations to continue, even if the ship's speed or propulsion is affected. Winkleman said alcohol and the lack of “independent law enforcement” on board both play a role (though ships have security). CLIA estimated that 31.5 million cruise passengers would sail in 2023 – 106% of 2019 numbers – according to its State of the Cruise Industry report. Breaking the data down, 76 of the cases were allegedly committed by passengers, while crew members perpetrated 17. From January to September 2023, the FBI received 39 case reports of sexual assault and 58 reports of rape.
Your Role in Preventing Sexual Assault
The best way to avoid both catching and transmitting germs is to wash your hands, particularly before eating and after using the restroom or coming in contact with high-touch surfaces like handrails and elevator buttons. However, ships are held to high cleanliness standards that are dictated and monitored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via the Vessel Sanitation Program, which was implemented in the 1970s. Cruise security guards have the authority to break up fights and mitigate passenger hostility, drunkenness and other inappropriate behavior. They also have the authority to place rowdy, violent or otherwise dangerous passengers in the ship's jail, known as a brig.
Safety Tips for Parents
A small percentage of sexual crimes against women at sea are prosecuted by the U.S. federal government. I attended a hearing in 2007 before Congress regarding cruise ship crime where a senior FBI official testified that only 7% of sexual assaults on cruise ships are prosecuted in federal court. In 2010, Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010 (CVSSA) to address safety issues on cruise ships, including sexual violence prevention and victim response. RAINN helped to advocate for the Act, which ensures that passengers have access to necessary resources to receive medical attention, have a sexual assault forensic exam on board, and make a report, should sexual violence occur. There were forty-five sexual assaults on Carnival ships reported in all of 2019 – the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the cruise industry down in 2020.
Investigating crimes on cruise ships
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Perhaps what's most disturbing, however, is that many crimes have jumped sharply higher. For instance, there were no homicides reported in 2023 and two suspicious deaths. Sadly, these stories are often said to involve passengers climbing on railings, going over on purpose, or suspicious circumstances late at night. Now that the pandemic has passed, ships have returned to normal protocols, just like most of society. While it is possible to get Covid on a cruise, its largely no longer causes the disruption it once did.
Why Are Crimes on Cruise Ships No Longer Being Disclosed to the U.S. Public?
However, maritime law is dicey and often unclear when it comes to which country has jurisdiction over crimes that happen in international waters. The fact cruise passengers are clearly more likely to be physically or sexually assaulted on a Carnival Cruise Line ship is obscured by misleading references to the total amount of people who cruise annually. It’s not an effective warning to talk about Carnival carrying 5.5 million passengers a year when the company’s per capita sexual assault rate is higher than the average of most U.S. states. We dug through the most recent reports (available from the U.S. Department of Transportation) to determine the prevalence of serious crimes at sea. We looked at a total of five quarters, covering all of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018.
Crime Safety on Cruises
As part of CVSSA, passenger rights were established to increase safety for travelers on cruise ships. Knowing these rights before you board may help you feel more secure, and they can help you speak up if something happens. You can learn more about these rights from information published in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Popular FoC countries tend to be those with the least stringent laws and regulations around labour, safety and environmental protection. Cruise ships are most likely to be registered to the Bahamas, Panama and Liberia. Police forces are governed and empowered by nation-states in order to protect their citizens and to prevent crime and civil disorder. National police forces may also sometimes work together to tackle international crime via the global policing coordination organization Interpol. Theft of $10,000 or more saw 20 alleged offenses, which equates to about one incident every 2.5 weeks on a cruise ship.
Did you know that HeinOnline has a dedicated subcollection on the law of the sea? All of these figures cover reported crimes among both passengers and crew on the ship. Department of Transportation website provides updates on crimes aboard ships reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Congress rejected CLIA’s argument and concluded that per capita cruise crime statistics should be calculated based on the average number of passengers sailing at a particular time, not on the annual number of passengers.
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There’s a range of potential complicating factors for crime investigation on cruise ships. The consequences of a crime on a cruise ship vary depending on the seriousness of what you’ve done. You may be disembarked at the next port of call, and handed over to the local police. For serious crimes, you’ll be locked in your cabin or in a ship’s brig until you reach port. Under international law, the US cannot prosecute crimes on foreign-flagged ships once they move outside US jurisdiction. It would be illegal for the FBI to enter a foreign-flagged vessel outside US territory or to enforce US criminal laws, without flag state permission.
Cruise ship police officers are more like security guards, many of whom serve as law enforcement officers or members of the military in their countries of residence when they aren't working on board. Cruise lines are also “subject to much more robust civil liability due to maritime law,” she said, and are “strictly liable” for assaults against guests by employees. Cruises to or from the U.S. must comply with federal crime reporting requirements, and CLIA policy requires member lines to report allegations of serious crime on any oceangoing voyage, no matter where the ship is sailing or registered. The unique nature of cruise ships, operating in international waters and often docking at various international ports, creates a jurisdictional complexity that necessitates clear legal protocols.
Cruise lines reported 82 alleged sexual assaults from 2018 to the DOT, more than any other crime, according to Business Insider. Reports of sexual assault on cruises in late summer of 2019 spiked 67 percent from the previous year, according to the Washington Post. Under a law known as “The Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) of 2010” cruise ships that embark and disembark in the United States must report major crimes to the agency.
They are designed to keep passengers stabilized and comfortable until they can be sent to a nearby land-based hospital. It's not possible for someone to slip on a wet deck or trip over a door frame and simply fall off a cruise ship. In addition to following cruise ship wellness policies, there are other ways you can minimize your chances of becoming ill when you sail.
Finally, when people wonder if cruising is safe, they might have worries that come with being on the open ocean. Things like hitting a nasty storm, falling overboard, a breakdown happening to the ship, or even the ship sinking. These types of events definitely make big headlines when they do happen, but as you’ll see, they are also extremely rare.
Cruise ship safety is the responsibility of both the cruise line and individual passengers. Cruise ship safety measures are in place on every vessel in every major cruise line's fleet. However, there are some extra tips you can follow to stay safe on a cruise. While even one crime is too many, the cruise lines are the only sector that are required to report numbers. The same can not be said for all-inclusive resorts, hotels, theme parks, or airport.
The purpose of the public disclosure of mandatory reporting of sexual assaults, assaults with serious bodily injuries, missing U.S. nationals and deaths on cruise ships is to educate and warn the traveling public of dangers on cruise ships. If you've watched the news at any point over the past several years, it's likely you've seen disturbing stories about cruise ship norovirus or COVID-19 outbreaks and passengers "falling" overboard. Combine that with reports of sexual assault and fistfights, and it's no surprise you might be wondering whether cruise ships are safe. The CVSSA data disclosed last week indicates that there are reports that ten sexual assaults and rapes of passengers occurred on Disney Cruise ships in the first nine months last year.
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