"[C]riminologists have proven to be notoriously bad predictors of crime rates. This is because there are so many factors that converge to produce increases or decreases in aggregate levels of crime. For example, the most powerful correlates of crime are age, gender, and socioeconomic status. Males between the ages of 14 and 24 from impoverished backgrounds are disproportionately represented in both offender and victimization statistics. This means that a criminologist could safely predict that when demographic shifts occur in society, such as decreasing number of male youth age 14 to 24 in the population, crime will decrease. However, crime rates in aggregate and individual-level criminal behavior are much more complicated that the theories would lead us to believe, and some might say virtually impossible to accurately predict given the varieties of human behavior and the endless parade of variables that affect criminal behavior."