LOS ANGELES - Admitting she was frightened, heiress Paris Hilton traded in her Guccis and designer clothes for jail garb on Sunday night as she began serving a 23-day sentence in Los Angeles for violating probation, her attorney said on Sunday. "Paris Hilton has turned herself in to begin serving her sentence for violating probation at a Los Angeles County Jail located in Lynwood, California," attorney Richard Hutton said in a statement.

It also quoted the 26-year-old hotels heiress as saying: “This is an important point in my life and I need to take responsibility for my actions. In the future, I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make … Although I am scared, I am ready to begin my jail sentence.”

According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Hilton was booked at 11:38 p.m. PDT on Sunday (2:38 a.m. EDT/0638 GMT Monday).

Celebrity news site TMZ.com said the surrender was done out of the glare of photographers staking out the Lynwood facility.

It said Hutton picked up at Hilton at her parents’ house at 10:30 p.m. PDT (1:30 EDT/0530 GMT Monday) , and drove to the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where she surrendered to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. From there, she was driven to the jail in Lynwood, about 15 miles away.

TMZ added that her family went with her to the surrender.

Hilton was due to turn herself in by Tuesday to start serving her term, which already has been cut from 45 days to 23 days under state sentencing guidelines.

Earlier in the evening, she attended the MTV Movie Awards near Hollywood, where she was the butt of comedians’ jokes.

Hilton was arrested for drunken driving in September, and in January, she pleaded no contest — the equivalent of a guilty plea — to a reduced charge of alcohol-related reckless driving. She was sentenced to three years’ probation and had her license suspended.

But the heiress was caught driving on a suspended license in February when police stopped her for going over the speed limit with her headlights out at night. A traffic court judge ruled on May 4 that Hilton’s latest offense constituted a probation violation and sentenced her to 45 days in jail.

Hilton will be held in a unit for celebrities and high-profile inmates at the jail. The unit is separated from the general prison population, officials have said.

Source: Reuters