Cuba is undergoing an unprecedented public security crisis as the police are conspicuously absent in the face of crime and direct their forces against dissent, leaving the population completely defenseless against a rising wave of criminal activity.
According to the Cuban Observatory for Citizen Audit (OCAC), in 2025 there were 2,833 verified crimes on the island, an increase of 115% compared to 2024 and 337% compared to 2023, with an average of seven to eight crimes daily.
Theft was the predominant crime, with 1,536 cases in 2025, an increase of 479% since 2023. The hardest-hit provinces were Matanzas with 503 cases, Granma with 424, La Habana with 398, and Santiago de Cuba with 323.
Experts warn that these figures represent only a fraction of reality, given the fear of reprisals and the widespread distrust in state institutions.
The structural trigger is the economic collapse: the Cuban economy contracted by 5% in 2025 and has accumulated a drop of 15% since 2020, according to the Cuban Economy Study Center at the University of Havana, which has led to a surge in poverty and, along with it, rising crime rates across the entire nation.
This is compounded by the internal collapse of the law enforcement forces themselves. The 20% of the police officers left the force in the last year, leaving large areas of the country virtually without security coverage.
Meanwhile, the repression of freedom of expression reached 203 violations in just one month, and agents stormed homes armed with rifles belonging to citizens, highlighting the real priority of the regime: to control dissent, not to protect the population. According to analysts, the Cuban police are not designed to serve the citizens.
The police inaction in the face of crime is documented in specific cases. Last Friday, a family in Santiago de Cuba waited more than ten hours without a response after reporting a theft in their apartment in building T-37, located in the Micro 8 neighborhood. The police claimed "shift change."
In light of institutional neglect, citizens have begun to take justice into their own hands. The neighbors of Guantánamo captured a thief by their own means, while a mob in Santiago de Cuba nearly lynched another criminal. In a case that sparked outrage, a thief was tied up and paraded through the streets as a public warning.
The outlook painted by this spiral of crime and impunity is not accidental: it is the logical consequence of a dictatorship that has never designed its police apparatus to protect the citizen, but rather to protect itself.
Many Cubans sum it up with a phrase that is increasingly repeated on social media in desperate tones: "We're not even safe at home anymore." And they are right. The attackers operate with complete impunity in busy areas, without police presence or immediate response, while the regime deploys its armed agents not against crime, but against those who dare to denounce it.
The State prioritizes political repression for its own survival, not the actual security of the Cuban people. As long as this equation remains unchanged —and it will not change without a system change— Cubans will continue to be trapped between the criminal who comes through the door and the regime that watches through the window.
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