Upon his release from a Georgia jail on Monday, Bobby Brown told reporters that it would be the last time they saw him enter or leave a prison. Just two days later a Canton, Massachusetts, judge ordered the troubled singer to spend ninety days in the Norfolk County House of Correction for failure to pay more than $60,000 in child support for two children he fathered.

Brown, 35, had previously been sentenced to sixty days in the DeKalb County Jail in Georgia for a probation violation that had its roots in a drunk driving charge from the mid-Nineties. He was released three days early for the Massachusetts hearing. Brown's current incarceration could cause problems as he's due in a Fulton County, Georgia, court on May 5th to answer to charges of misdemeanor battery after he allegedly struck his wife, Whitney Houston, during a dispute at their home near Atlanta in December 2003.

Brown can secure his release by paying the child support for two children, twelve- and fourteen-years-old, but he told Judge Paula Carey that because of a lengthy absence from the music scene, he didn't have the money to do so. Houston, 40, did not attend Brown's hearing; the R&B singer has been sorting out her own troubles, recently checking herself into a rehab center. Brown and Houston have one child.

MARC W. DOLECH
(March 25, 2004)