Paris Hilton released from prison

US celebrity heiress Paris Hilton has been released from prison in California.

She had served 23 days of a 45-day sentence for a probation violation.

She left prison today after a bizarre, three-week stay in which the hotel heiress was briefly released to her Hollywood Hills home, then sent screaming and crying back to a county lockup.

The 26-year-old walked out of the all-women’s jail in Lynwood to an enormous horde of cameras and reporters just after midnight local time. It wasn’t immediately clear where Ms Hilton was heading.

Ms Hilton’s path to jail began on September 7, when she failed a sobriety test after police saw her weaving down a street in her Mercedes-Benz. Ms Hilton, who said she was hungry and on the way to get a hamburger, pleaded no contest to alcohol-related reckless driving and was sentenced to probation for three years.

In the months that followed she was stopped twice by officers who discovered her driving on a suspended licence. The second stop landed her in court and then in jail.

Hilton spokesman Elliot Mintz would not comment on what the star of television’s The Simple Life planned to do after being released. That left Paris watchers everywhere to speculate about everything from where the hotel heiress would be to what her first meal would be.