CONTROL BALANCE THEORY

Control balance theory (CBT) was developed in the mid-1990s, primarily to

illustrate a particular method for building integrated theory and to show how
general theories are useful in addressing various issues in studies of crime and
deviance. A major theme on which the theory has been built is the idea that
deficient control, a well-established classic notion, and excessive control all can
have deviogenic consequences. In addition, the theory rests on expectations that
sufficient explanation will necessarily involve complex arguments. Thus, CBT not
only attempts to explain the phenomena within its domain, but it also challenges
simplistic theories, contentions that theoretical integration is both impossible and
undesirable, and neglect of contingencies in theorizing.
Control balance is an original theory of deviant behavior developed by Charles R.
Tittle, who presented the initial statement of the theory in his book, Control
Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance (Tittle 1995, cited under Initial
Statement of the Theory). Following its 1995 publication, the book received
distinguished scholarship awards from both the American Sociological Association
and the American Society of Criminology. Tittle’s control balance theory also
became the focus of scholarly conference sessions and the subject of several book
reviews (Savelsberg 1996, cited under Theoretical Development), and it was
featured in two exchanges between Tittle and critics of the theory in the journal
Theoretical Criminology (Braithwaite 1997 and Tittle 1997, cited under
Theoretical Development). In the ten years following its publication, a dozen
journal articles empirically tested various hypotheses and other features of the
theory, and Tittle published a major revision of the theory in 2004 (Tittle 2004,
cited under Theoretical Development). In spite of this initial flurry of debate,
discussion, and research, attention to the theory waned between 2005 and 2010,
with only three new empirical pieces testing control balance theory. The
complexity of control balance theory, combined with the need for primary data to
measure and test hypotheses, may account for this development. However, the
period of 2014–2018 witnessed a new spate of research, much of it focused on
stalking behavior. Control balance theory is predicated on the idea of control,
which is (1) the degree to which others and a person’s surroundings can limit an
individual’s behavioral options and (2) the extent to which an individual can
escape from these controls and exercise such controls over others. The ratio of
controls exercised to controls experienced constitutes the control ratio, which is the
central cause of deviance in the theory.
 The key assertion of control balance theory is that control ratio imbalances will
be associated with deviance because they will lead to an imbalance between
motivation toward deviance and constraints on deviance behavior. Control
imbalances can be of two types: (1) control deficits, which occur when the control
that individuals can exercise is exceeded by the amount of control to which they
are subject, and (2) control surpluses, which indicate that the controls that
individuals can exercise surpass the controls they experience. Importantly, in this
initial statement of the theory, control deficits are hypothesized to impact only
“repressive” types of deviance (similar to street crime), whereas control surpluses
should affect only “autonomous” deviance (analogous to white-collar crime and
elite deviance). As control ratios approach a balanced point, in which controls
exercised and controls experienced are equal, deviance becomes less likely,
because deviant motivation and constraints on deviance will be balanced. Direct
tests of control balance theory, however, showed that both control deficits and
control surpluses tended to be associated with deviance, regardless of whether it
was repressive or autonomous. Tests that examined contingent or causal chain
relationships between control ratios and other theoretical variables also tended to
be supportive and, again, generally without regard to the type of deviance in
question. In response to empirical findings and published critical appraisals,
Charles R. Tittle removes the typology of repressive and autonomous deviance in
his 2004 revision. In its place, he develops the concept of the “control balance
desirability” of deviance, which represents how effective a given deviant act is at
improving a control ratio imbalance and how impersonal it is. Deviance that
requires less direct involvement from actors and that (if successfully completed) is
likely to result in substantial improvements to a control imbalance is seen as
having greater control balance desirability. However, to date, no research testing
the revised theory has been published.

Initial Statement of the Theory

Control balance theory endeavors to account for variation in individual deviance,
as well as the seriousness of these actions. Unlike many other theories, control
balance seeks to explain not only adolescent delinquency and other street-crime
types of deviance, but also the deviance of powerful actors, often called white-
collar crime or elite deviance.
 In addition, control balance theory also addresses variation in deviance across
population aggregates, but this aspect of the theory has received little attention.
Tittle 1995 provides a new definition of deviant behavior and an accompanying
typology by which different deviant acts can be categorized according to whether
they are repressive or autonomous, as well as their seriousness within these types.
Deviance is portrayed as instrumental behavior that is employed in an effort to
improve the actor’s control ratio. The crux of the theory is that deviance will
increase as control ratios become increasingly imbalanced. This results from the
effect of control ratios on other causal process variables, particularly deviant
motivation and constraints on deviant acts. In this original formulation of the
theory, control ratio imbalances are also theorized to affect the seriousness of the
deviance that individuals perform, a provision that is removed in Tittle 2004, a
major revision (cited under Major Revision) and replaced by the idea of “control
balance desirability.”
The current study contributes to the small, but growing, body of literature testing
Tittle's control balance theory by offering a unique test of the theory's ability to
explain a wide variety of offending among a large sample of recently incarcerated
jail inmates. Among the full sample of inmates, both control deficits and surpluses
significantly increase the risk of offending. When men and women are examined
separately, control deficits are non-significant while control surpluses continue to
increase offending, and this effect does not significantly vary among men and
women. Evidence from the interactive effects of control imbalance and self-control
indicate that control surpluses and low self-control are also related to committing a
wider variety of crimes.