I dont buy that for a second. I believe the mass majority are not desperate people, but people taking shortcuts. I've know a number of shoplifters in my life, most of them in high school and college and one older. Not like "career" shoplifters, but people that have done it on more than one occasion and none of them were financially poorly off. I believe most drug dealers choose to deal drugs because it's more enticing to be making $1000 a day dealing drugs than $10 an hour flipping burgers. In fact a close friend of myself became one and he was a pretty smart, educated guy who just made the wrong friends in his teens and got sucked in to the money. There are very few people that genuinely commit crime out of desperate circumstances where there were no other options. 

So, I guess you're generally fine with the status quo then.

How so? Status quo is soft on crime.

Not really, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world along with capital punishment. I know this is a UK article but I believe you're talking more broadly.

If the Dankula case is any indication, Britain just doesn't care about individual freedoms.

Incarceration isn't a large deterrent. In the philipines they kill you for drug and theft crimes and it's working, a lot of the data is showing that. So no, I'm not satisfied with locking people up for life, in fact I consider that immoral and to be akin to torture. It's a human zoo and I'm against zoo's for animals too. I'm for quick, and severe forms of punishments that will result in the desired effect - deterring the criminal and others from doing what they did again. I guarantee that if you cut the hands off shoplifters in public a LOT less young people would casually try it. They can go back to living their lives quickly with a lesson learned in 1 hour they wouldn't gain from 2 years in prison.  I'm for data though, so if the data came in and showed it to be ineffective then I wouldnt stick with it for the sake of it. but it should be tested.

I don't think any update to the law is required. You'll likely find he was arrested on suspision while the police investigation but he was released after no more than a few days with no charge. This is just done to ensure there was nothing wrong. 

The current British law is than a homeowner can defend themselves and their property with reasonable force, which depends on how the situation is perceived by them at the time, rather than by information there weren't to know (i.e. If a gun is real or not). It draws the line at when say the intruder flees and the homeowner were to give chase down the street and continue to attack.

There was similar incident near where I live where an intruder was killed in a struggle with the homeowner. The police investigated and released the man with no charge. A memorial to the intruder outside the house laid by the intruders family was torn down by the homeowners neighbours.

@VGPolyglot does that sound like the status quo? I dont think so :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43676359

No charges were brought. See the link above. The below extract sums up the legal complexities of these cases quite well.

The law was clarified in 2013 to say if it was a highly stressful situation and if someone was under a great deal of pressure, then it would not be against the law to act using reasonable force. It's always debateable what reasonable force actually is. But there was an assumption that if someone entered your house and if you were genuinely petrified and you did take some action, such as we had in this case, then that could be considered reasonable.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-believe-death-penalty-effective-deterrent

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/04/30/theres-still-no-evidence-that-executions-deter-criminals/?utm_term=.9ab78eb7e9df