Paris Hilton achieved the impossible yesterday by becoming, for the first time in her 26 years, an object of public pity. Well, almost.

The celebrity heiress was dragged from a courtroom screaming and crying after a judge ordered her to go back to jail. She was whisked off to the medical centre at Los Angeles’s Twin Towers jail less than 36 hours after the local sheriff’s department had told her that she could serve out her sentence at her luxury home in the Hollywood hills.

“Mom! Mom! Mom!” she shouted as a female deputy escorted her from the courtroom. “It’s not fair. It’s not right!”

Worse still, Judge Michael Sauer declared that she should serve the entirety of her 45-day sentence for breaching probation on a reckless driving offence. Before her early release on Thursday morning, she had expected her sentence to be cut in half.

We'll always have Paris

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BACKGROUND

• Paris Hilton: a jailbird no more

• Paris Hilton is behind bars

• Paris shares cell with jailbird who won’t sing

• Paris does porridge

• All the thrills and spills of Hilton’s celebrity trial

Multimedia

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Hilton, whose previous appearance in public had been on Sunday in an expensive strapless dress at the MTV music awards, arrived in court with her hair in a mess and tears running down her face.

She wore a grey fuzzy sweatshirt and no makeup. Her body shook constantly during the proceedings, during which she dabbed her eyes and, turning to her parents behind her, mouthed: “I love you.”

Los Angeles had not seen the like of it since O. J. Simpson’s famous slow-moving attempted flight from justice. Hilton’s journey back to justice was similarly filmed, every inch of its 13 miles, by a swarm of helicopter-born camera crews.

Judge Sauer had ordered her to appear in court yesterday morning after learning of her release from jail. But, as ever, she had sought a softer option by requesting a telephone hearing so that she would not have to leave her expansive Spanish-style mansion. That was not good enough for Judge Sauer.Outside her home, about 150 photographers and journalists — as well as supporters wielding “Release Paris” placards — were already massing. A nation was transfixed. News channels abandoned all coverage of the G8 summit. At last she was seen being bundled into the back of a sheriff deputy’s car, handcuffed and weeping.

The frenzy began early on Thursday when sheriff’s officials released Hilton after serving just three full days, because of an undisclosed medical condition. She was sent home under house arrest with an electronic ankle tag.

“I have learned a great deal from this ordeal,” she said in a statement, “and I hope that others have learned from my mistakes.” But Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the prosecutor who handled her case, had not been consulted. He reacted furiously, saying: “We cannot tolerate a two-tiered jail system where the rich and powerful receive special treatment.”

He suggested that Sheriff Lee Baca, who allowed Hilton out of jail in the middle of the night, should be held in contempt of court. This was because Judge Sauer had specified that she must serve time in jail. “No work furlough. No work release. No electronic monitoring,” he wrote on the sentencing order.

It is believed Hilton’s psychiatrist, Dr Charles Sophy, who last month said that his patient was “too traumatised” to testify in a libel case, had successfully pleaded with the sheriff’s department to release her.

Friends said that she was not eating or sleeping in jail, and that she had been crying a lot. Some reports suggested that this was because she had not been allowed to wax or use moisturiser. Others claimed she was on the verge of a breakdown. But Judge Sauer asked why, if she had a medical condition, she could not be treated at the jail’s own medical facilities. He said the motion for her release had never crossed his desk and “there’s no way I would have approved it”.

Last night Hilton was undergoing medical and psychological tests at Twin Towers. “She’ll be there for at least a couple of days,” said Steve Whitmore, a sheriff’s spokesman. Sheriff Baca said he would abide by the latest court order.

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