TL;DR: The difference between a 'hot prowl' and 'home invasion' is not usually in the law. Both are breaking and entering where I live, AKA burglary.
The "hot prowl" was made famous here in California by GSK (Joe DeAngelo, finally caught decades after his rapes and murders via genetic genealogy). Even before he was caught, it was clear that the Visalia Ransacker had started with cold prowling, then moved on to "ransacking" (in which he mostly disturbed contents of the house, but also took certain things - coin collections, Green and Blue stamp collections).
A cold prowl is when someone comes in and cases your home while you're not there. That has personally happened to me and has also happened to other women I know. In one case, the guy actually ate food from the fridge, watched TV and used the shower/restroom (this happened to a friend of mine, at first she thought she was going crazy, then she was truly terrified and of course moved - to a new job and to a new apartment). I have interviewed cold prowlers (they were in jail ultimately for burglary/theft of some kind).
I believe that DeAngelo started with cold prowling (probably in his teens, many teens do it). When I was 8, two teen age girls took me on a cold prowl. They made it seem like it was "okay" with the little old lady whose house it was. They looked in her refrigerator, took a sip of something (I think it might have been beer) and giggled a lot. We were there for about 5 minutes. They lived just up the street from this lady and knew her and her habits. Neither of these girls went on to become a criminal.
Hot prowling is when the person breaks and enters when people are asleep and just stares at them (often an escalation of peeping tom-ness). It's the next step in their criminal practice. DeAngelo probably hot prowled 10X the people that he actually raped or murdered. He may or may not have taken tokens from some of those houses, he was not made to confess during his plea bargain, so we'll never know. At any rate, hot prowling is psychologically an escalation from peeping tom-ness and from cold prowling).
A home invasion is bent on awakening the people within and terrorizing them, either to give up all their valuables and the cash in the house OR their ATM pin, etc. Home invasion can be by one person, but it is often more than one person. The person is armed, almost always guns are involved. There's been a spate of them near my work recently, two men with guns - they think they've caught one of them and the other has a warrant for his arrest. Home invasions are not usually preceded by any sort of prowling (although I'm sure somewhere, there are people who have escalated from prowling to invading).
The home invader literature and research suggests that houses are chosen by "perceived value," (so big McMansions are targeted as are country club homes, large houses on larger properties, and here in L.A., the most important variable is: proximity to freeway. ALL of the home invasions in my own hometown (we had a series about 5 years ago not far from my house) were right next to the freeway, as in, get off, take first right into neighborhood, see big houses at night with lights out, kick down the door, come in with guns, etc. The three in my area were off three different off ramps, but all of them were the first neighborhood one came to, after getting off the freeway. It is believed they were all the same two guys - no one was ever arrested.
We got a metal framed door, built a (cute) fence/gate for the front yard. There were also some burglaries going on (daytime, cold prowling and burglary), same M/O though - kick in the front door. We had had a security system and cameras already - none of the houses that were burgled OR invaded had either of those. I even know one homeowner who put a trip wire around the edge of his property, which set off lights and an alarm inside his house. They had the most expensive remodeled house in our neighborhood, even though we are not right off the freeway, they were scared.
In my own view, almost every serious criminal starts out "small." Peeping, then cold prowling are common. Going on to hot prowling is major, though. It's fairly rare, and it is usually related to fantasies in the criminal's mind about rape or other horrific crimes. That's the reason that many of us here have commented, in these 80+ threads, about the vulnerability of a "Party House" or a house with windows that are not covered, where the interior is generally somewhat lit at night. A house with people possibly coming and going in the night, anyway (so that everyone is used to various footfalls around the house). The police referred to 1122 King Road as a "fish bowl," IIRC. For the people who are just creepers/peepers, that's an inviting house (and it's possible that some of these creeps actually do interact with each other online - it has happened).
Once a person has broken the creeping/stalking/peeping tabu, I believe that person is at risk for developing even more antisocial behaviors. In a case I was involved with here in my town, a cold prowler/burglar is now in prison for life - because he panicked and stabbed to death a 13 year old boy who happened to surprise him by being in the house, during the day, when he had just broken in. The boy was home sick from school, heard the door open, got up and went toward the kitchen. The killer came out of the kitchen with a knife.
The police were able to link this criminal to several other burglaries (cold prowl style) in which cash and credit cards were stolen. Police believe the killing was unplanned (but not un-thought of).
While creeping and peeping, criminals like DeAngelo collect a lot of information about who is home, who comes home when, etc. DeAngelo even used the phones inside the houses on occasion, drew maps, and preferred tracts of homes where he could know the home lay-outs (he would attend real estate open houses, developer open houses, and of course, he also got to go inside houses to investigate crime, as he was a policeman throughout most of his criminal career).
IMO. IME.
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