For the UK contingent: crimes are usually dealt with in different levels according to severity. What might get a traffic court or a justice of the peace trial is something like a neighborhood dispute or traffic citation. Crimes like theft, assault, drug posession (up to a point), property crimes with what we've been hearing recently in Texas where repairmen take advantage of the elderly in home repair or roofing schemes (take the money, don't do the work) or scammers are trying to live rent free in luxury homes that are in foreclosure, those kinds of things are dealt with in the city, the county, or the state. Misbehavior by businesses (poor maintenance causing injuries, not keeping food cold enough and causing food poisoning). These are only a very few examples.

Federal crimes cover things where there are overarching laws passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation may be involved in investigation. Kidnapping, some murders, crimes that cross state lines (fleeing or transporting materials, victims, etc.) and civil rights crimes. Bank fraud, a lot of white collar crime.

The hate crime laws are newer, but they are important for allowing investigations in communities where they occur and the natives aren't too keen on prosecuting their own for something they may not completely disagree with, or where the local prosecutors will be run out of town on a rail if they try to do it. An early crime that was prosecuted under the hate crime legislation had to do with the dragging death of a black man in east Texas named James Bird. Three white men tied and chained him and they drove down the road in a pickup dragging and battering him on the pavement. I think he lost limbs and his head before they stopped. Three guys were given the death sentence for that, and they were tried under federal jurisdiction.

SRS