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A hate crime is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership of a certain social group or racial demographic.
Examples of such groups can include, and are almost exclusively limited to ethnicity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, age, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Non-criminal actions that are motivated by these reasons are often called "bias incidents".
"Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts which are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the social groups listed above, or by bias against their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, homicide, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, mate crime, or offensive graffiti or letters.
A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech: hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct which is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech.