Inside a nondescript two-storey building next to a busy freeway in an industrial neighbourhood far removed from Hollywood is where Lindsay Lohan will likely spend several weeks as part of her punishment for violating her drunken driving probation.
In pictures: Celebrity jailbirds
Lohan was slated to begin her sentence on Tuesday at the bleak, 16-year-old Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, just south of downtown Los Angeles. The actress would be housed in the 2,200-bed facility's special needs unit, where she would live in isolation for her own safety.
Thanks to jail overcrowding and a state programme that credits inmates for good behaviour, non-violent female misdemeanour offenders such as Lohan typically serve only about 25 per cent of their sentences, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore.
That means Lohan's 90-day sentence could be reduced to about three weeks and she could be out of jail in time for the premiere of Machete, the action-thriller opening September 3 that stars Lohan as a nun.
It won't be Lohan's first time inside the lock-up, which has served as Los Angeles County's only all-female jail since 2006. The actress spent about 84 minutes there in 2007 for a drunken driving offence, reduced from her already trimmed day-long sentence because of the overpopulation issue. She was searched, fingerprinted and placed in a holding cell but allowed to keep wearing her street clothes.
Empty-handed
This time, with a much longer sentence, the 24-year-old star will most certainly have to trade her designer clothes for a jail-issued orange jumpsuit. Lohan will also be asked to arrive empty-handed and must surrender any jewellery.
Besides the jumpsuit, Lohan will also be given a set of simple toiletries that all inmates receive: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, comb, deodorant, shampoo and shaving implements. Paris Hilton received one for her own secluded 23-day stay in 2007 for reckless driving charges, according to Whitmore.
Like other inmates in the special-needs area, Lohan will be served her meals in her cell (pictured above) and will be allowed outside the 12-foot-by-8-foot (3 1/2-by-2 1/2-metres) space for at least an hour each day. With only a public pay phone at her disposal, the frequent micro-blogger will likely be silent on Twitter during her incarceration. Cell phones and computers aren't allowed inside.
Alexis Neiers, the reality TV starlet from E!'s Pretty Wild, is currently serving a six-month sentence in Lynwood after being implicated in a break-in at Orlando Bloom's home. Neiers' mother, Andrea Arlington, has criticised the jail's conditions on Twitter, suggesting the water made her daughter sick and that Neiers wasn't receiving items ordered from the commissary.
Neiers' lawyer, Jeffrey Rubenstein, said the 19-year-old aspiring model had a difficult time at first adjusting to her solitary life, from eating "really bad food" like noodles and apples to being woken up throughout the night. Rubenstein, who visited Neiers last Tuesday, said the folks inside the facility are buzzing about the potential arrival of Lohan.
For more comfortable accommodations, Lohan could petition the court to "pay to stay" in one of about a dozen smaller jails, such as those located in nearby Beverly Hills, Burbank or Glendale, home of the 5-year-old jail where a judge allowed Kiefer Sutherland to serve 48 days in 2007 and 2008 for his drunken driving charge because of county jail overcrowding.
But there would be trade-offs: If approved by her sentencing judge, Lohan's stay at one of these suburban jails could cost her between $75 and $120 (Dh275-Dh440) a day. And she would probably serve more of her 90-day sentence at these facilities because they aren't as overcrowded as Lynwood.
