Havana/Crime in Cuba in 2025 increased by 115% compared to 2024, according to the most recent report from the Cuban Observatory for Citizen Audit (OCAC), which collects this data since 2023. In total, the organization identified and verified 2,833 crime reports, compared to 1,317 in 2024 and 649 in 2023. If compared to that year, the figure has grown by 336.58%.
Since that year, crimes have not only been sustained, but have doubled in number in parallel with the worsening of the economic and social crisis, far from the discourse of the ruling party, which maintains that there is a “trend to decrease”, as reported on the Presidency portal and statements by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero in 2024 and 2025.
This increase also translated into victims, which last year were 700 – 335 men, 213 women, 48 minors and 62 elderly –, 173 more than in 2024 and 257 more than in 2023.
The murder rate is the only category that improved each year, since 197 were reported in 2023, compared to 167 in 2024 and 152 in 2025. However, the report places violent deaths at 173, including femicides, while the perpetrators were 170, of which only four were women.
The murder rate is the only category that improved each year, since 197 were reported in 2023, compared to 167 in 2024 and 152 in 2025
But that does not mean that a safer environment has been achieved. For example, the record of robberies has multiplied exponentially, reaching 1,536 – in Matanzas alone there were 311, in Granma 220, and Las Tunas 189. The figure represents an increase of 74.55% compared to 2024 and 479.62% compared to 2023.
This typology of property crime was the main core of the monitored crime. Many of them were concentrated in the livestock mass (407), although assaults on private properties accumulated the largest number (577), and 327 occurred in state entities.
The report draws attention to the growing number of incidents related to drug use. 437 crimes “associated with the production, sale and consumption of drugs” were reported, a magnitude with enough thickness to leave the opaque box of Others, a category in which it previously entered.
The Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC), which also published its report this Monday, states that the month of January left 87 protests exclusively linked to citizen insecurity. According to their analysis “there were (…) 21 crimes of larceny – robberies, assaults, scams and looting of homes or private properties – with the aggravating factor of a growing number of firearms in the possession of criminals. The assaults on drivers of motorcycles and other vehicles proved to be among the most violent.”
The first month of the year closes for the OCC with an important record of protests: a total of 953, including complaints and critical statements, “with a record number of 395 challenges to the police state.” According to the OCC, these entries in its registry “indicate that the capture of Nicolás Maduro, (…) has encouraged credible hope on the Island of being able to free itself” from the current regime. Among the most notable events, the report mentions the graffiti with the message “Long live Trump” on a wall in Havana.
