English Heritage chief calls for tougher sentences for heritage crime He told the Daily Telegraph: "I think we've got perfectly good laws, perfectly good enforcement. The system works. The failure in my view comes at the court - where is the deterrent? I do think there's an issue of calibration between a Rothko painting and a prehistoric monument. Obviously it's really bad news that someone goes and damages a valuable painting in the Tate Modern. But why does destroying an ancient monument have a lesser punishment? Roger Penny, 73, a retired plant-hire manager, found himself in court in October after he caused serious damage to a historically-important Neolithic earthwork henge in Somerset called Priddy Circles, which was built in 3,000BC, around the same time as Stonehenge. The judge noted that "significant archaeological information" could have been lost but only ordered Mr Penny to pay a fine of £2,500 along with costs of £7,500. The pensioner also agreed to pay about £38,000 for restoration work to the monument. Mr Thurley said the police were now taking heritage crime seriously and cases were regularly being brought to court, but sentencing judges sometimes appeared to struggle to quantify the impact of the serious damage done to historic sites and buildings. "I completely reject the notion that you have to have a monetary value to determine what the loss is because there is actually a cultural loss," he said. It is a very difficult thing to calculate when you destroy something that's been there for 6,000 years and it's then no longer there for anybody else to see, enjoy and understand. The English Heritage chief executive welcomed the recent prison sentences given to a gang of men who stole lead from the roofs of 20 churches in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. The thieves made £70,000 by selling the metal for scrap but caused £1 million of damage. However, Mr Thurley said there was evidence that many of those who targeted historic monuments, including metal detector users who dug up archaeologically rich sites looking for valuable artefacts, were "habitual" offenders. He suggested that some thieves even trawled English Heritage's own databases of protected sites looking for places likely to contain rich pickings. There is no disincentive. If you get a slap on the wrist, you just go and do it again," he said.