Evaluating clients for credibility blocks the unreserved advocacy service demands

Evidence

Third, advocacy is incompatible with controlling clients. Street-level bureaucrats usually must make judgments about clients on matters unrelated to appropriate service. They must as well make judgments about credibility, eligibility, and performance. Is the welfare recipient truthful? Does the claimant of legal services truly face an emergency? Is the job trainee certifiably competent? The street-level bureaucrat is almost always a judge as well as a server. Yet it is hard to do both at the same time. Since these are human interactions that are the subjects of judgment, street-level bureaucrats are not free to give themselves unreservedly to clients. They feel the need to make sure that they do not lose control, respect, advantage, or face, or otherwise fail to perform as required by their role. Street-level bureaucrats may attempt to do a good job, but it will be a job tempered by the other psychological and role requirements placed upon them. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 556

Categorization

• QUESTION: The judge-versus-server contradiction might explain how routine credibility assessments, not ideology, encode stereotypes fastest into eligibility judgments.