As of March 7th, 2024, Miami Beach has officially announced the end of its long-standing association with Spring Break. Due to the amount of illegal activity and arrest made in the last 5 years, Miami has been on high alert for the future of spring break in the city.

According to USA Today, “[Travelers should] expect curfews, security searches, and bag checks at the beach access points, early beach entrance closures, DUI checkpoints, bumper-to-bumper traffic, road closures, and arrests for drug possession and violence,” the Miami Beach website stated.

Miami receives a large number of spring breakers—ranging from hundreds to thousands
yearly—leaving crowd control to be uncontrollable. In 2021, Miami Beach made more than 1000
arrests among spring breakers, leading them to issue an emergency curfew. Furthermore, in 2022,
two shootings injured five people, leading to another curfew.

The Miami Police Department claimed that they arrested 488 individuals, impounded 105 firearms, and issued 7,190 traffic citations between Feb. 27 and March 27 of last year. A similar disorder led Fort Lauderdale to do the same thing in the early 1980s.

Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Dean Trantalis, told USA TODAY that “…over time, the crowds stopped coming in such large numbers, and restrictions, like closing the beach at 5:30 p.m., and mounted patrols of the beach, helped to keep things under control these days,” said Trantails.

Miami Beach is adding more security Thursday through Sunday for all of March which will limit beach
access as well as the city will enforce the early closing of liquor stores. Additionally, from March 7th through the 10th, the 14th, and the 17th, the city will close parking garages in South Beach.