Advisory social-work reports become the real rulings in courts handling the poor.

Evidence

In some domestic relations courts the recommendations of social workers on the placement of children in contested divorces almost invariably provide the guidelines for judicial action, although their reports are supposed to be only advisory. The same has been observed of adoption agency workers and judicial consent to placement. 26 According to Jerome Carlin, in many specialized judicial settings that deal with the poor “it has become common practice to delegllte authority for decision making to administrative personnel: referrees, commissioners, probation officers, medical examiners, marriage counselors, and others.” — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 955

Categorization

• CANDY: The detail that the report is ‘supposed to be only advisory’ while functioning as the actual decision is quotable and lands in one line.