"People are not profits: an empirical analysis about claims of cream- creamskimming practices by private prisons"

Private prisons are a multi-billion profit-making industry (Vittert, 2018) currently controlled by a few big corporations in the world: CoreCivic, GEO Group Inc, MTC, G4S and Serco (Mason, 2013). Even though private prisons’ existence and desirability are continuously called into question by some, inmates housed in private facilities have increased faster than the total incarcerated population in countries that allow private for-profit corporations to manage and operate prisons (Gotsch and Basti, 2018). In that sense, debates have been ideologically, normatively and empirically based but still mainly reliant on arguments of cost-savings. Considering that the United States houses the world's most significant privately held inmate population (Gotsch and Basti, 2018), this study uses data from the Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities (United States Department of Justice, 2017a) to test cream-skimming claims empirically. After controlling for relevant factors according to the literature, the results from the diverse multilevel models undertaken reveal that private prisons tend to incur in horizontal cream-skimming. This means that they are specializing in treating a more homogenous inmate population needs-wise rather than housing a cross-section of inmates. This practice —although opportunistic— is legal; thus, if considered an unintended consequence of policy design, policy-makers can always address it. Findings also point to the fact that enacting laxer or harder legislation impacts the way private prisons act. However, on the central claim of vertical cream-skimming practices, this study could not reach conclusive findings as only hints of the possibility of said practice were found by one of the two hypotheses used to test the said claim. The findings hope to spark interest to take further steps in empirically examining the matter since it continues to be relevant for inmates and policy-makers as more countries in the world consider the possibility of allowing private for-profit corporations to manage and operate prisons fully.