Table Of Content
Stateroom safes, ship security cameras and electronic key card room access all work as theft deterrents onboard. Rough Seas & HurricanesWorried about hurricanes or other major storms while on the ship? From time to time you will see some hair-raising videos of cruise ships in heavy seas.
Jurisdiction and Laws
Controlling the flow of luggage contraband is a tiny fraction of how cruise ships deal with crime onboard. The statistics in the report include homicides, suspicious deaths, missing U.S. nationals, kidnappings, assaults with bodily injury, thefts of more than $10,000, vessel tampering, and sexual assaults. In 2017, federal authorities reported a total of 106 crimes, including 76 sexual assaults, 13 serious assaults, eight thefts of more than $10,000 and two kidnappings, according to DOT numbers, which compiles the figures in quarterly totals. Cruise ships typically have security personnel on board who are employees of the cruise line, not law enforcement officials. Carnival Cruise Line reported thirty-six (36) such incidents for the first three quarters of the year, including thirty-one passengers who were attacked (the remainder were identified as crew members or “unknown”). Prorated for the rest of the year, the number of sexual assaults and rapes on Carnival Cruise Line ships would be forty-eight (48).
Are there police on cruise ships?
Thick metal or Plexiglas panels or metal bars are positioned under the railings to prevent people from slipping through. Even so, it's important to keep a close watch on young children at all times. Those are up from 87 alleged sexual assaults in 2022, and 101 in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the cruise industry down (cruising resumed in mid-2021).
Types of Crimes Committed on Cruise Ships
The decision to jail or disembark a passenger usually rests with the captain. Breakdowns & SinkingsAnd what about the ship breaking down or even worse, sinking? Others may remember the Carnival Triumph fiasco where an engine room fire left the ship crippled at sea, complete with toilets backing up. Both incidents were widely reported, while occasional other incidents make news, such as ships seeing a fire. For as much publicity as outbreaks do get, ships reaching that 3% threshold are relatively rare.
Tips on preventing, reporting sexual assault aboard a cruise line - Palm Beach Post
Tips on preventing, reporting sexual assault aboard a cruise line.
Posted: Thu, 04 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Crime on Cruise Ships: Unpacking the Hidden Dangers at Sea
Being in the industry, we’ve personally cruised extensively ranging from Alaska to Mexico to The Bahamas. For reference, CDC data says that about 28 people die each year from lightning strikes in the United States. And about 26 people die in U.S. national parks from falls in an average year.
thought on “Do Cruise Ships Have Police? How Cruise Ship Security Deal With Crime at Sea”
Jurisdiction over a crime committed on a cruise ship typically depends on the ship’s location at the time of the incident, the nationality of the victims and perpetrators, and the country of the ship’s registration. Most cruise ships are registered under foreign flags, which complicates jurisdiction. The U.S. federal court has jurisdiction only when the assailant and/or victim is a U.S. national. Unless the victim is a U.S. national, the FBI will not investigate the crime. The FBI will not investigate when a foreign (i.e., non-U.S. citizens) crew member rapes another non-U.S. The DOJ will not prosecute crimes involving victims who are not from the U.S.
Recent Rise in Sexual Assaults on Cruises
The DOT was tasked with posting the crime data on a quarterly basis on a spreadsheet located on an internet portal which you can see here. On cruises departing from and returning to U.S. ports, the FBI sometimes might not begin its investigation until the ship returns, and then do so in conjunction with law enforcement officials in the port city. Cruise line security personnel are essentially first responders in most cases, ensuring continued safety of all passengers until they can hand the matter over to law enforcement in a port. When it comes to theft, the FBI reports only address those involving more than $10,000, and none were reported in the months we looked at. A look at the Cruise Critic message boards turned up plenty of threads regarding thefts experienced by members below the reporting threshold, but each thread had far more members reporting a lack of problems with theft than the other way around.
Smooth(er) Sailing, but Rough Waters Remain
Some areas of maritime law are decades or centuries old, and may not be obviously relevant to modern cruise ship crime. It would obviously be impractical for Bahamas police to attend, so the highly-trained cruise ship security team will be first on the scene to deal with any crimes committed at sea. Instead, an onboard Security Director will oversee the ship’s own dedicated security department, staffed by former federal, state and military law enforcement personnel from various countries. The cruise industry opposed the legislation and was able to water down certain parts of the legislation. For example, cruise line lobbyists opposed the reporting of shipboard thefts and was successful in having language inserted in the CVSSA requiring reporting only where the amount of the stolen items exceed $10,000.
What are Cruise Ship Security Teams Like?
One key feature of the CVSSA concerns the data collection and reporting requirements. The Act mandates that cruise lines report allegations of crimes to the FBI and that the Department of Transportation (DOT) makes statistical crime data available to the public. The U.S. Code, Title 18, section 113 covers penal code offenses applicable to the maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. This includes crimes on American ships or foreign ships involving U.S. citizens. Additionally, crimes on board cruise ships may fall within the scope of Admiralty and Maritime Jurisdiction, allowing the United States to exercise authority over contractual and tortious actions at sea.
Airport security can be stressful for any traveler, but for some survivors of sexual assault the security screening process is a little more sensitive. While we don’t want to discount incidents that do happen, we have never felt unsafe on a cruise or in a port of call. We don’t want to downplay the seriousness of something happening in the open ocean. To our knowledge, Costa Concordia is the only modern cruise ship from a major line to actually sink in recent history.
But Royal Caribbean had far more passengers than Carnival at any given time. Royal Caribbean had a maximum of around 125,000 passengers, and Carnival Cruise Line had a maximum of around 75,000 passengers. This resulted in a higher per capita rape rate on Carnival cruise ship than its competitor Royal Caribbean. After initially requiring the FBI to report the crimes to the United States Coast Guard, the CVSSA now requires cruise lines to report the crimes to the Department of Transportation (DOT).
In the beginning of the pandemic, outbreaks on cruise ships were widely reported. It even led to a pausing of the industry until new protocols were put in place to combat the spread. Another way that some are concerned about safety is more about health and well-being on the ship.
2 families sue cruise line as numbers show spike in reports of sexual assaults at sea - NBC 6 South Florida
2 families sue cruise line as numbers show spike in reports of sexual assaults at sea.
Posted: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The good news is that the overall number of serious crimes reported was quite low when compared to passenger counts. In a year in which more than 13 million passengers boarded ships in U.S. ports, fewer than 100 serious crimes were reported to the FBI. It does happen, but it’s also a small number of major offenses that are reported, which should help put you at ease.
The truth of the matter is that Royal Caribbean had a total of more guests who sailed throughout 2023 (6 million) on its ships than Carnival Cruise Line which sailed 5.5 million guests last year. Although the CVSSA requires the reporting of crimes which occur only when the cruise ship calls on a U.S. port, both Carnival and Royal Caribbean report crimes which are alleged to occur during cruises which do not call on U.S. ports. The most serious crimes of homicides, suspicious death and missing passengers, totaled only 11 incidents during the five quarters we looked at. Assault and sexual assault were hands-down the predominant reported crimes onboard, totaling 14 incidents for physical assaults and 72 cases of sexual assault during the 15-month period.
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