Criminal Penalties
Criminal penalties for hate crimes vary from state to state but many hate crimes are felonies (crimes punishable by more than one year in prison). States that allow penalty enhancements might increase the penalty by a certain number of years or raise the offense level—say from a misdemeanor to a felony or from a second-degree to a first-degree felony. Under federal hate crime legislation, bias-motivated violence is punishable by ten years to life in prison, and some bias-motivated crimes are punishable by the death penalty. (18 U.S.C. §§ 245, 249.)