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Criminal Justice & Criminology · Criminal Justice System

Felonies, Misdemeanors, and Offenses

12 min read 5 practice questions
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This lesson describes United States law for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice, it does not describe the law of any other country, state law varies and changes, and no one should rely on it to assess their own record, rights, eligibility, or immigration status. Consult a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction for advice about a specific situation.
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On this page 9 sections
  1. In 30 seconds
  2. Why this matters
  3. The college version
  4. Eli explains
  5. Worked example
  6. Key takeaway
  7. Quick check
  8. Study tools
  9. Sources & references

In 30 seconds

In United States law an offense is a or a because of the prison term a legislature authorized for it, not because of how serious the conduct feels. Federal law sets the line at one year: more than a year is a felony, a year or less is a misdemeanor, five days or less is an . States draw their own lines. The label then governs procedure, and it triggers consequences that outlast any sentence. This lesson is educational material about U.S. law, not legal advice.

Why this matters

Classification is the switch most of the criminal justice system runs on. It shapes which court hears a case, whether a jury is available, how long a sentence may be, and, long after any sentence ends, whether a person can vote, hold an occupational license, keep a housing voucher, possess a firearm, or remain in the country. A student who studies only the sentence has studied only part of the punishment. Anyone heading into courts, policing, corrections, social services, or policy analysis needs to see how one statutory label propagates through dozens of otherwise unrelated bodies of law, and why identical conduct can carry different labels one state line apart.

The college version

The line is authorized punishment, not gravity

Ask most people what makes something a felony and they will describe the conduct: violence, large sums of money, real harm. That is not the legal test. In United States law the classification follows the punishment the legislature authorized for the offense, and only that. Federal law makes the rule explicit. Under 18 U.S.C. 3559, an offense that Congress did not already label with a letter is classified by its maximum authorized term of imprisonment, and the boundary between felony and misdemeanor sits at one year: an offense is a felony when more than one year may be imposed and a misdemeanor when the maximum is one year or less. New York states the same idea from the state side, defining a felony as an offense for which a sentence in excess of one year may be imposed and a misdemeanor as one permitting more than fifteen days but not more than a year. Two consequences follow, and students routinely miss both. First, the classifying fact is what the statute authorizes, not what the judge actually imposed; a defendant who receives probation for a felony has still been convicted of a felony. Second, whether a particular act feels serious is legally irrelevant to the label. The legislature already made that judgment when it wrote the maximum, and the courts read the maximum.

The federal ladder

Congress subdivides each side of the line. Under 18 U.S.C. 3559(a), an offense is a Class A felony if the maximum is life imprisonment or the maximum penalty is death; Class B if twenty-five years or more; Class C if less than twenty-five but ten or more; Class D if less than ten but five or more; and Class E if less than five but more than one year. On the misdemeanor side, a Class A misdemeanor carries one year or less but more than six months, a Class B six months or less but more than thirty days, and a Class C thirty days or less but more than five days. Anything authorizing five days or less, or no imprisonment at all, is an infraction. The classes are not decorative. Fine ceilings track them: under 18 U.S.C. 3571(b) an individual may be fined up to $250,000 for a felony, $100,000 for a Class A misdemeanor that does not result in death, and $5,000 for a Class B or C misdemeanor or an infraction, unless the statute defining the offense, or the alternative-fine provision in subsection (d), permits more. Letter grading is a state technique too. New York sorts felonies into five sentencing categories, with Class A split into A-I and A-II, and sorts misdemeanors into Class A, Class B, and unclassified.

Below the misdemeanor line

The tiers beneath misdemeanor are easy to overlook and account for most encounters with the system. Federal law calls the bottom tier an infraction. New York calls its equivalent a violation, defined as an offense for which a sentence in excess of fifteen days cannot be imposed, and pointedly excludes it from the word crime: in New York a crime is a misdemeanor or a felony, so a violation is an offense but not a crime. California likewise carves infractions out of its residual misdemeanor definition. Because New York's violations and traffic infractions are offenses but not crimes, a person who answers one does not acquire a criminal conviction at all. Legislatures also route regulatory matters entirely outside the criminal code into civil penalty schemes, where the government seeks money and imprisonment is unavailable at every stage. Federal law adds an overlapping label, the , defined in 18 U.S.C. 19 as a Class B misdemeanor, a Class C misdemeanor, or an infraction whose maximum fine stays within the section 3571 caps. That label carries real procedural weight. In Lewis v. United States, 518 U.S. 322 (1996), the Supreme Court held that an offense carrying a maximum of six months or less is presumed petty and brings no Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, and that the right does not appear merely because several petty charges tried together could add up to more than six months. Classification does not just set the ceiling on punishment; it decides who gets to decide guilt.

Grading inside a single offense

Legislatures also grade within an offense, which is where first-degree and second-degree language and offense-specific class letters come from. The federal murder statute is a compact illustration. Under 18 U.S.C. 1111, a killing by poison, by lying in wait, or by any other willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated act, or a killing committed during an enumerated felony such as arson, kidnapping, burglary, or robbery, is murder in the first degree; any other murder is murder in the second degree. Notice what moves the grade there. The victim is dead either way, so the harm is constant; what changes the degree is the defendant's mental state and the circumstances the statute singles out. Across American criminal codes the recurring grade drivers are the amount or kind of harm, the mental state proved, characteristics of the victim that the legislature has chosen to protect, the defendant's prior record, and specific statutory aggravators such as the use of a weapon or the location of the offense. Dollar thresholds are the most familiar version of the first driver: property crimes are typically graded by the value taken, so the grade can turn on an appraisal. None of this is a moral ranking that exists in the air. It is a set of drafting choices, and it can be redrafted.

Wobblers and the prosecutor's choice

Some offenses are written so that they can be either. California calls these alternative felony-misdemeanor offenses; practitioners call them wobblers. Penal Code section 17(b) provides that when a crime is punishable in the court's discretion either by state prison or county jail under section 1170(h) or by fine or county jail, it becomes a misdemeanor for all purposes through any of several routes, including the prosecutor filing a misdemeanor complaint or the court declaring the offense a misdemeanor when granting probation or before trial. General grand theft is such an offense: Penal Code section 489(c)(1) makes it punishable by county jail not exceeding one year or pursuant to section 1170(h). In a case the practical determinant of the grade is the charging decision, which is why prosecutorial discretion belongs in any honest account of classification. Federal charging policy states the framework openly: the Justice Manual instructs prosecutors to select the most appropriate charges, ordinarily including the most serious offense encompassed by the defendant's conduct that is likely to result in a sustainable conviction, while weighing whether the sentencing consequences would be proportionate, through an individualized assessment reviewed by a supervisor. Two defendants who did the same thing can therefore end up on different sides of the felony line.

Same conduct, different label

Because each state writes its own thresholds, the same act can be a felony in one state and a misdemeanor in another. Theft is the cleanest demonstration. California Penal Code section 490.2, added by Proposition 47 in 2014, makes obtaining property by theft a misdemeanor petty theft when the value does not exceed $950, with narrow exceptions for firearms and certain prior convictions. Virginia Code section 18.2-95 sets its grand-larceny threshold for simple larceny not from the person at $1,000, and section 18.2-96 makes anything below that petit larceny, a Class 1 misdemeanor. Take one shoplifting of goods worth $980. In California the value clears the petty-theft ceiling, so the case may be charged as grand theft, an offense that can be punished as a felony or a misdemeanor. In Virginia the same $980 falls below the grand-larceny threshold and the offense is a misdemeanor outright. Nothing about the conduct changed. Only the state did. When you read a claim that some behavior 'is a felony,' the first question is always: under which jurisdiction's law, and as of when?

Collateral consequences: where the label does its lasting work

The sentence ends. The classification does not. Collateral consequences are legal disabilities that attach automatically or by agency discretion because of a conviction, imposed by statutes and regulations that have nothing to do with the criminal code. They are cataloged in the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction, maintained by the Council of State Governments Justice Center with Bureau of Justice Assistance funding, which covers all fifty states, the federal system, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Compiling that inventory as of February 2019, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights counted approximately 44,631 collateral consequences, of which nearly 40 percent (17,436) are triggered by any felony conviction and about 19 percent (8,294) by any misdemeanor, and reported that employment (19,334) and occupational licensing (13,791) are the most common categories. The catalog changes with every legislative session, so treat the number as scale rather than a constant. The categories are worth knowing individually. Voting rights vary sharply by state; as NCSL summarized in May 2026, people convicted of felonies never lose the vote in the District of Columbia, Maine, and Vermont, lose it only while incarcerated in 23 states, lose it through parole or probation in 15 more, and in 10 states face indefinite loss for some offenses or must obtain a pardon, wait out an added period, or take some further step. Firearm possession is barred by 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) for anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year, though 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(20)(B) excludes state offenses the state itself classifies as misdemeanors punishable by two years or less. Immigration consequences often bypass the state label entirely: the aggravated felony definition in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43) applies whether the offense violated federal or state law, and several entries turn on a term of imprisonment of at least one year rather than on what the state called the crime, while 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(A) makes a noncitizen deportable for a crime involving moral turpitude committed within five years of admission for which a sentence of a year or more may be imposed. Public benefits and housing follow their own rules: 21 U.S.C. 862a denies TANF and SNAP to people convicted of a drug offense 'classified as a felony by the law of the jurisdiction involved,' subject to state opt-out, and 24 CFR 982.553 requires housing agencies to deny voucher admission to households containing a lifetime sex-offender registrant. Occupational licensing is the largest single field in the inventory, and private employment screening sits on top of all of it, governed not by a ban but by the EEOC's 2012 Title VII guidance, which treats exclusions based on an arrest alone as not job related and consistent with business necessity and asks employers to weigh the nature and gravity of the offense, the time elapsed, and the nature of the job.

Where the volume actually is

The felony is the tier that fills courses and television, but it is not the tier that fills courthouses. California superior courts recorded 3,243,657 criminal filings in fiscal year 2022-23. Of those, 183,151 were felonies, about 5.6 percent. Misdemeanors accounted for 439,041, about 13.5 percent. Infractions accounted for 2,621,465, about 80.8 percent, and most of those were traffic. Set the infractions aside and misdemeanors are still roughly 71 percent of crime filings, nearly two and a half for every felony. Counting rules differ between states and California's traffic infraction volume is unusually visible in its statistics, so treat this as one state's shape rather than a national constant. The lesson generalizes anyway: the ordinary encounter with American criminal justice is a low-level case, resolved quickly, often without a jury and frequently without a trial of any kind, and the tier that scholarship and policy attention treat as minor is the tier through which most people pass.

Eli, the EliExplains learning guide

Eli explains

The same idea, in plain words

Explain it like I’m 10

Every crime in a law book comes with a maximum punishment already written next to it. That number, not the story of what happened, is what decides the name. If the book says a judge could give more than a year in prison, the crime is called a felony. If the most a judge could give is a year or less, it is a misdemeanor. If it is only a few days, or just a fine, it gets a smaller name like infraction or violation. The name matters even to someone who is never locked up, because other laws, about voting, jobs, licenses, housing, and staying in the country, are written to react to the name.

Picture it like this

It works like a weight class in a wrestling tournament. You are placed by a number, the maximum punishment printed in the statute, not by how tough you look or how the match actually goes. Once you are in a class, a whole rulebook comes with it: which mat you compete on, who referees, what counts as a win, and what happens afterward.

Where the picture stops working

The comparison breaks in three places. A wrestler's weight is measured, while an offense's class is chosen by legislators who can move the line for political or budgetary reasons. Weight classes are the same at every tournament, but felony lines differ from state to state, so identical conduct changes class at a border. And a wrestler leaves the class when the season ends, whereas a felony classification keeps attaching consequences for years after the sentence is finished.

Worked example

Two people each take $980 of merchandise from a store, one in Virginia and one in California, with no weapon, no injury, and no prior record. In Virginia, $980 falls below the $1,000 grand-larceny threshold of Code section 18.2-95, so section 18.2-96 makes it petit larceny, a Class 1 misdemeanor, and the analysis ends. In California, $980 clears the $950 petty-theft ceiling of Penal Code section 490.2, so the case may be charged as grand theft, which section 489(c)(1) makes punishable by county jail up to a year or under section 1170(h). That makes it a wobbler, and under Penal Code section 17(b) the prosecutor's decision to file a misdemeanor complaint, or a judge's declaration at probation, can settle the grade. Same merchandise, same conduct, and a felony record is available on one side of a state line and not the other. If the California case is charged and resolved as a felony, the federal firearm bar of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) attaches, state voting rules apply during the sentence, and the conviction becomes a trigger for a share of the tens of thousands of cataloged collateral consequences that the misdemeanor conviction in Virginia does not trigger.

Key takeaway

An offense is classified by the punishment the legislature authorized, not by how serious it feels, and because so much other law reacts to that label, the classification often outlasts and outweighs the sentence itself.

Quick check

3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.

Question 1 of 3foundational

Under 18 U.S.C. 3559(a), a federal offense whose maximum authorized term of imprisonment is exactly six months is classified as which of the following?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Question 2 of 3intermediate

A defendant is convicted of a federal offense whose statute authorizes up to three years of imprisonment, and the judge imposes probation with no incarceration. How is the conviction classified?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Question 3 of 3intermediate

Two people each shoplift merchandise worth $980, one in California and one in Virginia. Which statement most accurately describes the classification difference?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Practice all 5

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Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related

You’ll learn to

  • Define felony, misdemeanor, infraction, and petty offense by reference to the punishment a statute authorizes rather than to the perceived seriousness of the conduct.
  • Explain how 18 U.S.C. 3559 grades federal offenses into letter classes, and compare that scheme with the New York and California schemes.
  • Distinguish classification across offenses from grading within an offense, and identify the factors that commonly drive a grade.
  • Apply the wobbler concept and prosecutorial charging discretion to determine how an offense is graded in practice.
  • Evaluate why collateral consequences, rather than the sentence, often make the felony label the most durable part of a conviction.

Common mistakes

  • Deciding whether something is a felony by how serious the conduct sounds.

    Read the maximum authorized punishment in the statute defining the offense. That number, and not intuition about gravity, is what 18 U.S.C. 3559 and its state analogues use.

  • Assuming the sentence actually imposed sets the classification, so that probation means the conviction was not a felony.

    Classification follows the punishment the statute authorizes. A probation sentence for a felony leaves a felony conviction, with the collateral consequences that attach to it.

  • Treating the felony and misdemeanor line as national.

    Each state sets its own offense definitions and thresholds, so identical conduct can be a felony in one state and a misdemeanor in another; California's $950 theft line and Virginia's $1,000 larceny line are a direct example.

  • Treating a state's misdemeanor label as a guarantee that federal consequences will not attach.

    Federal statutes sometimes defer to the state label, as 21 U.S.C. 862a does, and sometimes ignore it in favor of authorized punishment or the sentence imposed, as 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(20)(B) and the aggravated felony definition in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43) do.

  • Studying only the sentence and assuming that is the full punishment.

    Most of the durable effect of a conviction is in collateral consequences, of which the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights counted roughly 44,631 in the national inventory as of February 2019, of which employment-related consequences, at 19,334, are the largest single category.

Easily confused

Felony vs. Misdemeanor

The dividing line is the maximum authorized term of imprisonment, one year in federal law and in most states, not the character of the conduct or the sentence actually imposed.

Misdemeanor vs. Infraction or violation

A misdemeanor is a crime with real jail exposure; an infraction or violation authorizes little or no imprisonment, and New York does not count its violations as crimes at all.

Classification across offenses vs. Grading within one offense

Classification sorts an offense into felony, misdemeanor, or a lower tier by its maximum; grading assigns a degree or class inside an offense based on harm, mental state, victim characteristics, prior record, or statutory aggravators.

A fixed-grade offense vs. A wobbler

A fixed-grade offense carries one classification by statute; a wobbler can be resolved either way, so the prosecutor's charging decision or a judge's declaration, rather than the statute alone, determines the grade.

Direct consequences of conviction vs. Collateral consequences

Direct consequences are imposed by the sentencing court as punishment; collateral consequences are imposed by other statutes and regulations, usually automatically, and typically outlast the sentence.

Key vocabulary

Felony
In United States usage, an offense for which the legislature authorized imprisonment of more than one year; the federal boundary appears at 18 U.S.C. 3559 and most states draw the same one-year line.
Misdemeanor
A crime whose maximum authorized imprisonment is one year or less, tried in most states under simpler procedures and carrying fewer, though not zero, long-term legal disabilities.
Infraction
The lowest federal tier, covering conduct for which five days of imprisonment or less, or no imprisonment at all, is authorized; several states use the same word for their fine-only offenses.
Violation (New York usage)
In New York's Penal Law, an offense for which no sentence longer than fifteen days may be imposed, and which the statute deliberately excludes from the word crime.
Petty offense
Under 18 U.S.C. 19, a Class B misdemeanor, a Class C misdemeanor, or an infraction whose maximum fine stays within the caps of 18 U.S.C. 3571; the category matters mainly because it usually carries no jury-trial right.
Wobbler
An offense written so that a court or prosecutor may treat it as either a felony or a misdemeanor; California Penal Code section 17(b) sets out the routes by which such a charge becomes a misdemeanor for all purposes.
Grade
The specific class, degree, or level assigned to a particular instance of an offense, usually driven by harm, mental state, victim characteristics, prior record, or statutory aggravators.
Collateral consequence
A legal disability that attaches to a person because of a conviction but is imposed outside the sentence, by statutes and regulations governing voting, licensing, benefits, housing, immigration, or firearms.
Charging discretion
The prosecutor's authority to decide which offenses to file from among those the evidence would support, which in wobbler cases effectively determines whether a defendant faces a felony or a misdemeanor.

Sources & references

  1. 18 U.S.C. 3559 - Sentencing classification of offenses — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  2. 18 U.S.C. 19 - Petty offense defined — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  3. 18 U.S.C. 3571 - Sentence of fine — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  4. 18 U.S.C. 921 - Definitions (firearms) — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  5. 18 U.S.C. 922 - Unlawful acts — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  6. 18 U.S.C. 1111 - Murder — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  7. 8 U.S.C. 1101 - Definitions (Immigration and Nationality Act), including 'aggravated felony' at subsection (a)(43) — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  8. 8 U.S.C. 1227 - Deportable aliens — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  9. 21 U.S.C. 862a - Denial of assistance and benefits for certain drug-related convictions — Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives
  10. 24 CFR 982.553 - Denial of admission and termination of assistance for criminals and alcohol abusers — U.S. Government Publishing Office / Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
  11. New York Penal Law 10.00 - Definitions of terms of general use in this chapter — New York State Senate (official legislation site)
  12. New York Penal Law 55.05 - Classifications of felonies and misdemeanors — New York State Senate (official legislation site)
  13. California Penal Code section 17 - Felony, misdemeanor, and infraction defined; alternative sentencing — California Legislative Counsel (California Legislative Information)
  14. California Penal Code section 489 - Punishment for grand theft — California Legislative Counsel (California Legislative Information)
  15. California Penal Code section 490.2 - Petty theft; obtaining property by theft where value does not exceed $950 — California Legislative Counsel (California Legislative Information)
  16. Virginia Code 18.2-95 - Grand larceny defined; how punished — Virginia General Assembly, Legislative Information System
  17. Virginia Code 18.2-96 - Petit larceny defined; how punished — Virginia General Assembly, Legislative Information System
  18. Lewis v. United States, 518 U.S. 322 (1996) (No. 95-6465), majority opinion — Cornell Legal Information Institute (mirror of the U.S. Supreme Court opinion)
  19. Justice Manual 9-27.000 - Principles of Federal Prosecution (including 9-27.300, Selecting Charges) — U.S. Department of Justice
  20. Collateral Consequences: The Crossroads of Punishment, Redemption, and the Effects on Communities (Briefing Report, June 2019) — U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
  21. National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC) — Council of State Governments Justice Center, funded in part by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice
  22. Restoration of Voting Rights for Felons (brief and fifty-state tables, updated May 20, 2026) — National Conference of State Legislatures
  23. Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (No. 915.002, April 25, 2012) — U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  24. 2024 Court Statistics Report: Statewide Caseload Trends (Data for Figures 24-33, Criminal Filings, Dispositions, and Caseload Clearance Rate, FY 2013-14 through FY 2022-23) — Judicial Council of California

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Researched 2026-08-18

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