Routinized procedures force new clients into pre-existing case categories.

Evidence

These data reinforce the impressions gained from directly observing lawyers’ interviews with clients. They confirm that interviews are dominated by routinized procedures in which the prior existence of case types is presumed and new clients are fitted to the contours of the previously existing types. Clients are shaped to existing expectations of clients; cases are fitted to existing views of the kinds of cases typical clients present. All this is justified in the names of efficiency, thoroughness, and service. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 886

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: States the core causal engine of the reader’s hypothesis in its most compressed form: the category precedes the client, and the procedure converts expectation into apparent fact.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘The Form Fills Itself In’ — tracing how intake paperwork converts cultural stereotypes into administrative facts faster than culture itself shifts.
• XREF: connects to: Street-level bureaucracies manufacture client categories that people then internalize — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 455; Predictive labels displace case facts and determine how clients get treated — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 966; Specialized training makes workers see clients through predetermined processing categories — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1083 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Street-level bureaucracies manufacture client categories that people then internalize #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 455
• Predictive labels displace case facts and determine how clients get treated #corroborates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 966
• Specialized training makes workers see clients through predetermined processing categories #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1083
• People apply established procedures without re-evaluating marginally different situations #exemplifies (0.80)