Cruise Lines Release Crime Data

Twenty-eight people disappeared from cruise ships during the past three years, and only five of them have been found, according to figures released last week by Holland America Lines, Royal Caribbean Cruises and other major cruise companies. The disclosure of these and other crime statistics on the high seas comes in advance of hearings Tuesday by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that’s looking into cruise ship safety. The hearings were triggered in part by the July 2005 disappearance of honeymooner George Allen Smith IV from the Royal Caribbean Line’s Brilliance of the Seas as it sailed the Mediterranean.

The disclosure of the data is “unusual,” according to an AP story by Elisabeth Goodridge. “[C]ruise lines are not required by law to publish comprehensive crime statistics and criminal law varies greatly on international waters,” she writes. But the cruise lines say they’re releasing the information to show just how safe it is to take a cruise.

Goodridge writes:

James Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University retained by the International Council of Cruise Lines, said in a statement issued by the council that, “While virtually no place—on land or sea—is totally free of risk, the number of reported incidents of serious crime from cruise lines is extremely low, no matter what benchmark or standard is used.”

Christopher Shays, the Republican House member spearheading the hearings, doesn’t trust the self-reported figures. “I don’t have a comfort level that statistics from the cruise industry are accurate,” he said Saturday in a telephone interview with Goodridge. “I’ve never known statistics that are voluntary to be accurate.”

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