Carnival Leads all Cruise Lines in Crime for 33 Consecutive Months
Carnival maintained its reputation as the most violent cruise line leading all cruise lines in crime for 2025 per the recent report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). The last time a cruise line had more crime than Carnival was Royal Caribbean from April 1st to June 30th of 2022.
The DOT releases cruise crime data quarterly in accordance with the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act. The data includes only crimes that were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The DOT reported 48 crimes for all cruise lines from January 1st to March 30th 2025. A breakdown of crimes by cruise line is as follows:
- Carnival Cruise Line: 12
- Royal Caribbean Cruise Line: 9
- Princess Cruises: 6
- Disney Cruise Line: 6
- Norwegian Cruise Line: 5
- MSC: 5
- Celebrity Cruises: 3
- Virgin Voyages: 2
The crimes include assault with bodily injury, sexual assault, sexual assault-rape, and theft over $10,000. The most common crime was sexual assault-rape with 23 total incidents. Unsurprisingly, Carnival was the leader with 7 such incidents. The most notable sexual assault incidentl was on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas. Two cruise passengers Daniel Mondragon Leal (left photo), age 37, and Jose Juan Prudencio Diaz (right photo), age 36, molested a 14-year-old boy in the public sauna of the ship.
Diaz was HIV positive when the incident occurred. Both men were held without bail.
Cruise apologists will point out the cruise crime rates per capita are below some states in the United States. A simple retort is why do cruises, which should be fun relaxing vacations and cost several thousand dollars, have any crime at all? The answer is alcohol, tight living quarters, and opportunistic predators such as Diaz and Leal.
Robert McDonald, a criminal justice lecturer at the University of New Haven summarized why cruise lines suffer from high levels of crime in a Fox News story. He said the following in reference to cruise crimes, “I think anytime we get large numbers of people together… whenever there’s alcohol involved, whenever there are people being able to let loose a little bit from their normal personality, I think that exacerbates the ability for numbers to rise in that regard.” Highlighting McDonald’s summary of cruise crime is the massive brawl that occurred at the Port of Galveston after a Carnival ship disembarked. After the fight Carnival placed 24 people on its “Do Not Sail” list. Reports indicated fighting had previously broken out on the ship and tensions spilled over into the port.
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