ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the way each group of workers incorporates difference: in imagining themselves as part of their bureaucratic environments, doing justice for citizens and depicting a shared meaning of discretionary politics. It argues that both occupational groups were under a good deal of bureaucratic control and that the control exercised by members of each group was qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, different. Both counselors and police officers seemed to operate under substantial constraint, but these constraints often may be perceived differently by officers, as compared to counselors. For the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) staff, the abstract notions of justice often were equity-based, and the practical enactment of justice assumed difference. The RSA staff assumed that discretion was available to offices and were concerned with unifying decision making to achieve office-wide cohesion, the police officers, conversely, assumed that an external cohesion was understood and therefore focused on protecting individual discretion.
