Lindsay Lohan is going down. Hands up who is surprised. The former child actress turned designer turned blagger turned enfant terrible turned pop singer turned car crasher turned rehab jockey has trod a path so achingly familiar it's almost boring. Almost. It was, of course, all going to be so different when she started out as an infant and rose to become one of the most promising stars in Hollywood – a child star who could actually act, who had a look of freckled skin and red hair, at odds with the cookie cutter blue-eyed blondes who populate LA with factory conveyor belt frequency.

A remake of The Parent Trap established her, Mean Girls made her, and then Herbie: Fully Loaded bankrolled a lifestyle that took over from the day job. Then came two drunk-driving charges, cocaine possession, traffic accidents, a one-day prison sentence, two stints wearing an alcohol monitoring bracelet which has lately shown to be tampered with at the MTV Awards, and eventually a much more lengthy prison sentence for violating the terms of probation by not adhereing to obligatory sobriety classes, all to the backdrop of Lohan's endless and increasingly surreal excuses. So basically just a normal Saturday night for young Hollywood.

It's very easy to be lured into drink driving in LA. Nightclubs have valets for cars. I remember being looked at like a total nutjob after choosing to walk the 50 metres from my hotel on the Sunset Strip to a bar down the road instead of driving the short distance. Maybe that goes some way to explaining the perplexing question of why fine young things in LA insist on driving themselves everywhere even though they are millionaires and could easily fork out on a driver, but apart from all this, Lohan's case shows that American courts mean business.

When Lohan stood up in the courtroom last week to defend herself, sobbing, saying she didn't expect special treatment and that she thought she was doing everything asked of her in terms of her probation, it was too little too late. But standing there, helpless and desperate, there were flashes of that brilliant 11-year-old who netted millions in The Parent Trap, albeit now, her red locks were bleached Hollywood blonde, her lips were surgically enhanced and she sported a manicure that had f*** you stencilled on the nail of her middle finger, which she subtly showed (as subtly as you can display a profanity painted on to your fingernail) to the judge. It's hard to feel sorry for someone who is quite literally giving the finger to the system.

Behind every screwed-up American dream gone bad lies a set of parents to blame. Lohan is no different, with her mother, Dinah, currently pimping out her younger daughter Ali to any camera with its record light on, and a father, Michael, who veers between alcohol abuse, cocaine abuse, jail time, and Born Again Christian rants with an almost admirable reckless senselessness. Poor Lindsay. She never really stood a chance.

But it's the punishment of 90 days in jail followed by in-patient rehab that was doled out to her that's interesting. Over here, in Lindsay's ancestral home, it's doubtful that she would ever face jail time. Apart from showing how dreadfully boring Irish celebrities are, Lohan's case shows up our own court system in comparison. All she had to do was violate her probation for a stint in chokey, whereas in Ireland, it seems one has to go to monumental efforts to be imprisoned. On a daily basis, we're informed of crimes committed by people on bail, or by people with an unfeasibly huge number of previous convictions, all being given another chance to see the error of their ways. Lohan's antics, although criminal, ultimately serve only to harm herself and are clearly the result of her abusive relationship with drink and drugs.

Everyone always says how celebrities receive preferential treatment stateside, but being sentenced to three months in prison for what is, when you think about, a technicality – albeit one for which she should be punished – is quite dramatic. The system is sick of Lohan's antics, and sick of the publicity she brings to court, so much so that the judge in the case explicitly addressed a leak among her staff, saying that by the time she gets back to her chamber, TMZ.com (the relentless celebrity gossip site) already seems to know what she has said in private.

While the US judicial system has endless faults, is racially discriminatory, reactionary and often harsh, at least it follows through. At least it kicks ass when there's an ass that needs kicking, starlet or no starlet. It also offered the chance of rehabilitation and therapy as an alternative, which Lohan gave that middle finger to. In her time of turmoil, Lohan turned to what celebrities turn to when things aren't going well – Twitter – citing Article 5 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights that no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which is pretty rich from someone who starred in Herbie: Fully Loaded.

umullally@tribune.ie