Written by: Thomas01
Three Stories Analyzed The three stories I chose to write my paper on; are from pages 110 through 138 in Maynard-Moody and Musheno’s “Cops, Teachers, Counselors” book. They focus on the street level workers using their discretion to make decisions in their jobs. The stories are titled, “I’m Disabled but want to be an EMT”, “Cut the Power”, and “Ignoring Orders”. In this paper I will argue that street level workers use their discretion in ways that is not consistent with established rules while identifying different constraints operating on the workers and explain what the author’s mean with the reference to the three stories I have selected. To begin, street level workers use their discretion in ways that shows the presence of moral reasoning rather than following established rules of which they are supposed to follow. For instance in the story “Ignoring Orders” the teacher in the story was supposed to have the mother, whose child is in the special needs program, sign a consent form to relinquish service. The teacher did not perform the task as she was supposed to because she did not feel that it was morally right. She instead sent in the paperwork without the mother’s signature, which allowed the child to remain in the program. The second story entitled “I’m Disabled but Want to be an EMT” is about a counselor who is contacted by a client who has a bad back and has decided to become an EMT. The counselor is asked to allow the client to take courses to become an EMT, but the counselors better judgment in the case is that someone with a bad back should not be an EMT. So the counselor tells the client that she will not authorize the training since it would more likely put the client at risk of further injury. The third story, “Cut the Power”, is about a police officer who is called out to an apartment complex on a loud music complaint. When the officer attempts to make contact with the subject who has his music playing too loud, the subject curses and ignores him. Finally, the officer gets tired of the situation and decides to turn off the power to the subject’s apartment. He then tells the subject, “I’ll tell you what. If I have to come back again, I’m going to kick the door in, and I will take action. You will go to jail. I’m tired of this. This thing is over NOW. I hope we understand each other”(Pg. 126). Here you can see how the officer has become tired of the situation and has used his discretion to end the situation without making an arrest, or the subject having to pay any type of court costs. The officer also uses his coercive power by turning the power off to the apartment, where the officer felt like the complainant in his moral views that something had to be done in the situation. Each story has the worker in a situation where he or she is able to use discretion in their decision making process. In the case about the teacher and the special needs child, the teacher did not have to do what she did. She could have simply allowed the child to lose his counseling by having the mother relinquish the service by signing the forms. Instead, the teacher felt, according to her values, that the child needed the services and simply kept forwarding the forms without the mother’s signature so that the service could not be stopped. For example as the teacher said in the story, “I said, “Well, that is not fair to him, because he needs help also” (Pg. 110). Another example would be, “Anyway, I never contacted the mother again. I kept on forwarding the paperwork back downtown, and they eventually took it, and he is still getting social work. That is my way of saying “Screw you guys.” (Pg.111). The workers use their discretion to further illustrate on what is right from wrong. The teacher also demonstrates a “father or mother knows best attitude” (Pg. 105) toward her student. She feels she knows what is best for her student in this case. In all three cases the workers illustrate their discretions in trying to solve problems in the best manner they feel is necessary. The teacher should have listened to her superiors rather than using her discretion to allow the student to keep his services. The police officer should have given the guy playing loud music a citation for the offense, rather than shutting the power off to his apartment. Finally the counselor should have allowed the client to attempt to become an EMT in hope that his back would get better, rather than using her discretion and refusing to authorize his training. The constraints in the stories also limit discretion of the workers by making them think of their options and how they can be morally and legally right in their decisions and actions. These examples demonstrate the presence of moral reasoning, which is not consistent with established rules. They also demonstrate how the workers balance the two in their positions. In the story about the teacher and the special needs child, there were several constraints playing on the teacher’s decision. One of the constraints was the fact that the teacher’s supervisors downtown told her to have the mother, of the special needs child, sign a consent form to relinquish service. The second constraint was the fact that the teacher disagreed with the direction because she felt that the child still needed the services. The third constraint was the fact that the teacher ignored what she was told to do and acted how she felt she should to solve the problem. Each of these constraints affects the teacher’s decision by weighing what is right from wrong in the teacher’s views. She could have done what she was told to do, but then the child would lose his services. She felt the child needed the services and losing them would possibly hurt the child, therefore taking the services away was not an option for the teacher. In the story about the counselor and the client who wanted to be an EMT the constraints were more visible to the counselor. The first constraint was the fact that the client had a bad back due to an injury as a welder. The second constraint on the counselor was the fact that an EMT has to be in excellent health to be able to pick up and carry large people from stressful situations which could further hurt the client. Another constraint on the counselor is the fact that the client was worked up and excited about possibly getting the chance to become an EMT. The constraints work on the counselor in this situation by making the counselor use good judgment in the situation. If the counselor agrees to authorize the training she could be placing the client at risk of further injury and placing someone who needs immediate help in risk as well if the client injures himself in the field. Another idea to think of is that if the counselor does not authorize the training, the client will be heart broken as his dream job is taken away without a chance. The counselor must think strategically which is the better route to take. The counselor plays the role of a parent in the decision, as she must decide what is best for the client in his current situation. The third story about the police officer and the subject playing loud music has constraints, which are playing on the officer’s discretion on whether to take force action or not. The officer has multiple decision possibilities to make from the constraints in this case. Those constrains which are the loud music being played, the subject cursing and ignoring the officer’s orders, the citizen’s complaint, and the frustration the officer is feeling after trying to handle the situation. Another constraint would be how the officer’s fellow officers at the training session reacted when he mention what he did. The officers at the training session disapproved of his actions after he told them what he did, but he still felt that he did what had to be done in the situation. These constraints all play a major role. The officer could leave the scene a do nothing and end up being called back later. He could leave a citation on the subject’s door. He could call for assistance and possibly contact the landlord for entry to the apartment. The officer could also do as he did in the situation and shut off the power to the apartment, and then verbally make his point to the subject that the conduct should not be continued any more. The officer’s actions are played by the situation, constraints around him, and what he thinks would solve the problem with the least use of force involved. The officer in this situation decided to make his point clear to the subject without writing a citation, using force upon the subject, and without having to go to court over a loud music complaint. The author’s argument that “street-level decision making is complexly moral and contingent rather than narrowly rule bound and fixed” is the idea that the constraints on the workers play a large role in their decision-making. In each of the three stories I have chosen the street-level workers used their discretion based on the constraints around them to solve the problem they faced. The workers in each case did not completely follow the rules they follow. They instead follow the rules to a different degree that better fits their situations. For example as the officer said at the end of his story, “Maybe it was a little out of bounds, but, myself, I thought, ‘I did what I had to do to solve the problem for the other citizen’” (Pg. 127). From this example the street-level worker uses his discretion to change the rules to better handle the situation more effectively. The authors point is to show that for street-level workers to do their jobs more effectively they must use their discretion to make the laws and rules fair to everyone. There are some people who are poorer than others and simply cannot afford as much as others, therefore workers must alter the rules to allow those people the same advantages as everyone else. Just as the teacher used her discretion in her story to help a special needs child keep his counseling, other workers use their discretion to assist others in similar ways. The workers at times know what is best for those they are hired to serve and assist, which means they must use their discretion every day to make decisions as to what is best for their clients. A police officer must decide what is a fair course of action to handle various situations, a counselor must decide what is the best and safest course of action to take to assist a client, and a teacher must decide what is best for the students in their classes to be able to learn like the other students. Each of these roles as workers requires the use of discretion in every decision they make and how they do their jobs every day. The author’s argument that, “street level decision-making is complexly moral and contingent” bases on these examples from the stories. You also see that the workers do not work directly with the narrowly rule bound and fixed idea of the rules as they perceive in their roles that to not bend the rules makes it unfair to everyone else you are trying to help or maintaining order for. Each of the three stories tell a story where the teacher, counselor, or even the police officer used their discretion to find the best possible response to the problem placed in front of them. In the eyes of each of these workers, their decision was the best decision to please their client and assist them in their lives. Street-level work is as stated in the book, “…ironically, rule saturated but not rule bound”(Pg. 10). Rules and procedures are important, but they only provide weak constraints on decisions made by street-level workers. There are not laws or rules for every specific action, therefore the workers must adapt the laws and rules to their situations and use their discretion to decide what should be done. This is what the author’s mean in their argument within the three stories chosen for this paper.
Works Cited Maynard-Moody and Musheno. “Cops, Teachers, Counselors”. University of Michigan 2003