Cruise Bruise Blog
October 3, 2009
October 3, 2009
The Miami Solution - Low Sex Offender Density Near Cruise Ship Terminal
A funny thing happens when you build a county around the port, instead of building the port around the county, you get Miami, Florida. Employing 110,000 people, the Port Of Miami known as the cruise capital of the world was built like an old fashioned marriage, first the education, then the job, then the house, then the partner and then the offspring.
Unlike San Diego, California, a port built for the U. S. military, then expanded to become a cruise ship port as an after-thought, Miami has been in the passenger ship business at the current location for nearly five decades.
As such, the port and an industrial area not built around homes, creates a wide buffer zone between the residents and the cruise ship terminal visitors. In fact, the cruise ship terminal is on an island, not on the mainland at all, unlike San Diego.
Coming from the cruise terminal to the mainland, American Airlines Arena, Bayside Marketplace, Bayfront Park, Bicentennial Park and the Hotel Intercontinental cover the shore line, creating a resident-free zone for a distance of one mile.
This means cruise ship passengers can from the attractions, to the hotels, to the cruise ship terminal without passing through residential areas or coming into close proximity to registered sex offenders, not that there is many of them.
In the entire port zip code of 33132, which comprises one of the smallest port zip code populations in the country, a mere 5,322 residents, only 28 are sex offenders. In the two adjacent zip codes, 33137 and 33131 have 32 and 1 sex offenders, respectively to create a total sex offender population of only 61 offenders among a combined population of 27,683 residents.
San Diego for comparison, has more than double that amount of sex offenders, in their cruise ship terminal zip code.
Fortunately, these sex offenders will usually not be found in the immediate area of the cruise ship terminal.
A good number of the sex offenders live in tents under the I-195 Julia Tuttle Causeway, north of the Dodge Island, far enough away from the cruise ship terminal, it is unlikely cruise ship passengers will even know they are there.
Mouse over map below for satellite view of cruise ship terminal.
While there are a small number of sex offenders within a couple miles of the cruise ship terminal, there are more police, port authorities and private property security in the area, than there are sex offenders.
This is the second report in the series on cruise ship terminal sex offenders. I will expand on this topic to cover all major American ports. The purpose of this series, is to help passengers choose a port city for embarking that is family friendly and as low a risk to women and children travelers as possible.
The full report on Miami sex offenders and an updated list with photos is here
