Street-level bureaucrats are professionally bound to decide on evidence, not presumption

Evidence

This is particularly important for street-level bureaucrats who have a public trust to make significant decisions about citizens’ welfare. Police, judges, teachers, and mental health workers, for example, are generally obliged to make decisions on the basis of the available evidence rather than presumptions of proper determinations. They are obliged because they have been assigned profound responsibilities concerning the liberty of citizens or the fate of people regarded as incompetent and unable to act in their own best interests. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 631

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the normative baseline that makes categorical stereotyping a violation of the street-level bureaucrat’s public trust — the stakes of the reader’s mechanism.
• XREF: connects to: The judging role structurally prevents street-level bureaucrats from serving clients fully — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 556; Police treat field data as evidence, which blocks its use for systemic self-audit — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 422

Broader Connections

• Police treat field data as evidence, which blocks its use for systemic self-audit #expands (0.85) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 422