Procedures built for fairness double as insulation from clients’ human demands.

Evidence

Routinization rations services in at least two ways. First, set procedures designed to insure regularity, accountability, and fairness also protect workers from client demands for responsiveness. They insulate workers from having to deal with the human dimensions of presenting situations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 734

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies routinization’s dual function — rationing plus worker self-protection.
• XREF: Connects to reader’s hypothesis on how routine discretion institutionalizes distance from clients. — connects to: Apparent fairness of queues makes clients accept fixed-resource rationing assumptions. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 693; Dedicated human-relations units absolve line workers from applying fair treatment. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1008; Client-sorting practices get rationalized as benevolent policy after the fact. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 821

Broader Connections

• Dedicated human-relations units absolve line workers from applying fair treatment. #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1008