offense is considered the most serious, that’s up to 20 years in

jail. Then you have a second degree offense; third degree

offense; fourth degree offense and then when it goes down to

municipal court that’s where you have offenses that are

considered disorderly persons and that’s up to six months in

jail. It’s just basically they want to penalize you based upon

the severity or the amount of damage you’ve done to society. And

there’s all sorts of factors that go into whether or not you’ll

be found guilty of a certain degree. I mean a lot of times

people come in and they’re charged with a second degree offense

which carries a presumption of jail and I’m able to work it out

where they plead guilty to a third degree offense. They’ll still

have a record but there is no presumption of incarceration for a

third degree offense. There is presumption of jail or

incarceration for a first or second degree offense but not for a

third or fourth degree.

Obviously if you have no prior record that’s going to be

beneficial. They also have under -- in the criminal code they

have something called aggravating and mitigating factors and they

look at, you know, things that would tend towards giving you a

harsher sentence versus the mitigating factors which would kind

of explain your conduct and maybe lower the sentence you’re

looking at. But that’s the reason for the degrees to determine

where -- what level of punishment you should receive.