I guess it depends on whether you see prison sentencing a means to an end to reform and rehabilitate as well as a form of punishment to keep criminals off the streets by restricting their freedoms. Well, there is one thing that is certainly true, you have a great deal more folks enrolled in the Government funded and privately operated Universities of Crime over in the US compared to the UK (which itself has a higher number of criminal training institutions bursting at the seams than the rest of Europe per head of population).

In the last year the number of robberies and house breaking in my local Police area of Tayside has seen a 45% increase (82 reported) for house breaking and a 13% increase in robberies (an increase in 5 reported).

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/article...reaking-up.html

But the overall crime rate has fallen

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10432763

The major problem of shooting and beating to death a burglar is that even burglar's have friends and family, who might take their own form of justice against not only yourself but your family members as well. This leads to a spiral of revenge violence in local communities, which is perhaps why the murder rate in the USA is 6x that in the UK. (which is quite impressive considering all the folks that are already on death row and those banged up till they die and especially since the UK has done so well in catching up with the USA in the social economic income distribution gap). I believe that there are more folks in these US criminal university institutions that the rest of the world combined and make for a ready cheap pool of labour to compete and undercut even the commie Chinese worker for their corporate prison owners. Some even refer to it as the US Gulag system.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/article...ed-britain.html

Having convicted murderers not returning to jail after a home weekend visit might sound absolutely crazy and it certainly annoys the heck out of a lot of people surrounding the prison nearby but it doesn't mean that you cannot live peacefully nearby.

I think I'll stick with the criminal justice system we have here, despite the obvious anomalies and imperfections. Plus its a lot more cost efficient for the taxpayer as well keeping folks out of the criminal graduate eduction system. Do you know how much the US criminal justice system costs, it might very well surprise you.

And as US State and Federal budget cuts bite, there are certainly going to be a lot more graduate criminals out on the streets with no prospects in the near future thats for sure. Time to lock and load...

You can also defend yourself against violent attack in the UK, its called self defense, you just need to provide evidence you required it when using an acceptable level of force to stop and incapacitate the attack by the criminal. Its all based on a system of escalating violence, the aim is not to let the violence reach a level it spirals out of control ending in the death/GBH of the attacker or the victim of the crime, which is why even most of the criminals in the UK do not carry offensive weapons when house breaking or committing robberies.