Lads today really are going soft – in the 80s/90s if you were in HMP and there were rats prisoners often fed them and treated them as pets (it is illegal but if you’re already in jail that isn’t a big deal…) ; and threatened to wreck the place if the screws harmed the rodents in any way….
Wormwood Scrubs jail is ‘rat-infested and overcrowded’ – BBC News
