A hate crime is a crime against someone due to prejudice or hate towards that person for being different.
Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, or other grounds.
For example if someone has a mental disability and someone does a crime towards that person as in being violent towards that person or threatening that person with harm then that would be considered a hate crime by law.
I have a friend who has a mental disability and some teens in the town she lives in were threatening her with harm such as saying they were gonna run her over, shoot her etc.
The cops were called and they did nothing and the cops tried to say it was not a hate crime although it was a hate crime against her.
I spoke with a lawyer about it and he took the case for her and forced the issue to charge those teens with the hate crime which it was.
The teens were then eventually arrested by the FBI and held in Juvenile detention.
Now they are gonna spend the next few years in Juvenile detention and then have another 10 years in prison for the hate crime they did against my friend.
The judge said that he was gonna use those teens as an example.