Cruise Ship Crime Just Hit a Two-Year High — What Maritime Law Actually Protects You

Cruise crime reporting has climbed noticeably over the past two years, and most passengers have no idea that stepping onto a ship changes their legal rights the moment it leaves port. Here’s what the law actually says.

The numbers are public — because Congress required it

Cruise lines are legally required to report certain crimes — including homicide, suspicious death, missing persons, kidnapping, assault with serious bodily injury, and sexual assault — to the FBI and the U.S. Coast Guard under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010 (CVSSA). The U.S. Department of Transportation publishes the resulting data quarterly, and it’s public record (FBI: Crimes Onboard Cruise Ships; DOT/CVSSA Q4 2025 report, official PDF). Independent trackers compiling that same government data have reported crime counts reaching a multi-year high through 2026, with alleged underreporting flagged as an ongoing concern by maritime law practitioners (Cruise Law News, Q2 2026 Cruise Crime Report). The FBI has also taken the notable step of publicly urging passengers to report crimes immediately rather than waiting until they’re back on land, since jurisdiction and evidence preservation both depend heavily on timing at sea.

Why “international waters” doesn’t mean “no law”

A common misconception is that crimes or injuries on a cruise ship exist in a legal vacuum once the ship leaves U.S. territorial waters. In reality, several distinct bodies of law can apply depending on where the ship is, its flag registry, and where the passenger boarded:

General maritime law governs most passenger injury claims (slip-and-falls, negligent security, medical malpractice by ship’s medical staff) and is a distinct body of federal common law separate from the law of any single state.
The Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), codified at 46 U.S.C. § 30302, provides a federal wrongful death remedy specifically for deaths occurring more than three nautical miles from U.S. shore — but notably limits recoverable damages to pecuniary (financial) losses, excluding pain and suffering or loss of companionship in most cases (46 U.S.C. § 30302, Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute).
Your cruise ticket itself is a binding contract that almost always includes a forum-selection clause requiring any lawsuit to be filed in a specific court — typically the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for the major cruise lines. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the enforceability of these clauses in the landmark case Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Shute, 499 U.S. 585 (1991), even though the passengers never negotiated the term and only saw it printed on their ticket (official opinion, U.S. Reports, Library of Congress). That single 1991 ruling is the reason nearly every cruise injury or wrongful death case today gets filed in Miami federal court, regardless of where the passenger lives or where the ship sailed from.

Why this actually matters to you

These aren’t abstractions — they directly control whether a claim can even be filed, where, and what can be recovered. A death that would otherwise support a substantial pain-and-suffering award under a state’s wrongful death statute may be capped to purely economic losses under DOHSA solely because of the ship’s location at the time. And a passenger who assumes they can sue at home, near family, may discover their ticket already committed them to litigating in a courthouse they’ve never set foot in. The short notice-of-claim windows in most cruise contracts (often as little as six months to file, compared to years under typical state statutes of limitations) make this an area where acting quickly, and understanding which law applies before assuming any, is unusually important.

This post is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Maritime and admiralty law is highly specialized and fact-specific — consult a licensed maritime attorney promptly if you or a family member was injured or a death occurred aboard a vessel.

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