Cruise Ship Crime

Many families travel on cruise ships each year. When you think of going on a cruise, you think of exploring new countries, lying by the pool, watching shows, and having unlimited food. But when you think of going on a cruise, you never think about the crime on board. Over the year 2017 and the first quarter of 2018, there were 13 million passengers on cruise ships departing from the United States (Crow 1). Out of these 13 million passengers, only 100 crimes were reported (1). The most severe crimes being, homicide, suspicious deaths, and missing passengers, were only five out of the hundred (1). Assault and sexual assault were the most prominent crimes committed, with 14 physical assaults and 72 sexual assaults (1). Concerning theft, cruise ships are only required to report incidents with theft of over $10,000 (1). This left many crimes unreported due to laws that don't require cruise companies to report certain crimes, so many of these statistics fall short of what the numbers should be (WXYZ TV 1). Due to the issue of fabricating numbers and how much crime happens onboard, there are a few ways to keep this social epidemic problem from increasing.

In 2011 Janet Powers boarded a cruise with her family aboard the Carnival Victory, which is registered in Panama (Harotounian 1). Powers complained to the crew that a passenger's child was making noise in the hall (1). Later that night, Powers was confronted by that passenger (1). They got into an argument, and the other passenger grabbed powers by the hair and started smashing her head into the wall (1). When the ship ported in Puerto Rico, Powers talked to the Puerto Rican police, and they told Powers they had no jurisdiction because the alleged assault happed in international waters (1). The Puerto Rican police told Powers to report it to the FBI (1). After filing an FBI report, she was told that the “case did not merit prosecution" while the passenger that assaulted her walked away with no repercussions (1).According to Powers “Stories like this one are not uncommon; the inability of victims of crimes at sea to seek justice rarely happens” (1). Powers story shows how little police can do when crime happens onboard.

The first solution would be to add police officers on board. Unlike airplanes with Federal Marshals, cruise ships don't have police onboard at all (Walker 1). Instead, they have a few security guards who are loyal to the employer that pays their salary and not the passenger (1). When a crime happens onboard, the cruise line first notifies their risk management departments and lawyers (1). If the security tapes exculpate the cruise line, they can easily say the videos were "lost," or their cameras weren't working (1). The cruise line always protects their employee's legal interests and not the passenger's rights (1). In some criminal cases, the cruise lines don't even notify the FBI; in other cases, the cruise line tells the FBI only after the evidence has been destroyed and sanitized the crime scene (1). A solution to this problem would be to have police officers that are not paid by the cruise line onboard the ships. Therefore, police officers report directly to the crime when a crime happens, not allowing the corrupt security to investigate and tamper with evidence before letting the FBI investigate the problem.

The second solution would be to create a system where crew members would be held accountable for their actions.In 1999 Royal Caribbean hired two first-class firms to study the problem of sexual assault on board, hired a consulting firm to research security problems, and hired a nationally recognized expert on sexual harassment issues (1). During the investigation of the Royal Caribbean fleet, they discovered sexual misconduct from crew members frequently happens during cruises (1). They figured this problem was happening because crew members weren't scared of being arrested, or much less convicted (1). According to Dr. Krohne (the commanding officer at the naval training station), “the worst thing that could actually happen if a crew member was caught committing a crime on a Royal Caribbean was to be sent on a one-way flight home” (1). The experts concluded that male cabin attendants and bartenders are the most likely crew members to commit a crime, and the most likely location is the passenger's cabin (1). Many solutions were crafted by the few firms investigating the Royal Caribbean (1). The solutions were placing security cameras in passenger hallways, deactivating passenger cabin cards used by crew members after working hours and implementing steps to collect and preserve evidence to be used against crew members when they are at trial (1). The firms said that if they didn't have a system in place that would result in crew members being held accountable for crimes they commit, the crimes would continue (1). Unfortunately, when the Royal Caribbean received the reports, they didn't implement any improvements (1). Instead of making improvements, they told the public that crime on cruise ships was "rare" (1). Therefore, now there is still the same problem of when the FBI arrives at the crime scene, the evidence is long gone and the Royal Caribbean cruise line still hasn’t changed and will do nothing about it.

The third solution would be to make laws allowing police jurisdiction even if a crime happens on international waters. A sexual assault case happed on a Mediterranean cruise ship (Malkin 1). When the boat docked in Valencia, the judge declared that Spain had no jurisdiction in the case because the alleged assault happened on international waters (1). This just comes to show that if Spain can’t prosecute, no one can (1). Fredrick Kenney (the director of legal affairs and external relations for the international maritime organization) said, “There is no international law that covers this situation at the moment” (1). Maritime law states that a ship is subject to the law of the country of which flag it flies, but due to tax reasons, ships are flagged with the country of their home port or the location of the cruise headquarters flag (1). This causes jurisdiction to be an issue and leads to the FBI needing to investigate, which rarely ends up happening (1). By creating police jurisdiction on international waters this would fix the issue of police not being able to possess and investigate evidence.

The best solution for crime onboard cruise ships would be putting police officers on board. If police officers were on the boats, this would stop cruise security from being involved with the crimes happening on the ship. This would also put a stop on the cruise line from being able to protect their name, protect their employees, tampering with evidence, hiding the accurate numbers of crimes, and not contacting the FBI. If these changes were implemented, this could stop the rising numbers of the cruise ship crime social epidemic.

Works Cited

Crow, Melinda. "Crime at Sea - Cruises." Crime at Sea - Cruises, https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=240.

Harotounian, Eda. CRUISE SHIP AND CRIME: HOW TO BETTER PROTECT UNITED STATES' CITIZENS WHO ARE VICTIMS OF CRIME ON THE HIGH SEAS. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3112;context=llr.

Malkin, Elisabeth. “Report of Sexual Assault on Cruise Ship Shows Gaps in International Law.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Apr. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/cruise-ship-crimes-laws.html.

Walker, Jim. "Reason No. 2 Not to Cruise: Cruise Ships Are a Perfect Place to Commit a Crime, and Get Away with It!" Cruise Law News, 11 Apr. 2010, https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/04/articles/crime/reason-no-2-not-to-cruise-cruise-ships-are-a-perfect-place-to-commit-a-crime-and-get-away-with-it/.

“WXYZ TV Detroit Channel 7 .” Katano, Heather, director. WXYZ TV Detroit , episode Cruise ship crime , ABC, 13 Mar. 2014.