What would prison be like for Jackson?

SANTA MARIA, Calif. – No makeup. No wig. And nowhere to hide from a camera recording his every move.

Prison isn’t generally much fun for anyone. But for the germphobic, appearance-obsessed, privacy-seeking Michael Jackson, it sounds like his own personal hell.

And he’s staring into it now that the jury has begun deliberating.

If the jurors believe the King of Pop molested a young cancer patient, Jackson will trade in his lavish Neverland estate for an 8-by-8 beige cinderblock cell in the Santa Barbara County Jail.

The room features a seatless metal toilet, a low cement bunk with a thin foam mattress, a drain in the floor and a camera in the ceiling. The only window is to the interior corridor, where passing guards can look through the shatterproof glass at the prisoner.

“He will not have his wig. He will not have his makeup. There will be no deputy sheriff holding an umbrella for him,” said former Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas, who ran the jail for seven years.

“He would probably be considered a potential suicide risk and be put under 24-hour watch. Especially with a high-profile person like him, you never want anything to happen to them. He will not have any privacy. He will always be watched.”

If the jury pronounces Jackson guilty of a felony count, his hands would be cuffed behind his back, and he would be led away by bailiffs to a waiting van.

The ride to the Santa Barbara jail takes about an hour and torments the prisoner with a final look at one of the country’s most gorgeous landscapes: the provincial vineyards featured in the movie “Sideways.”

At the jail, metal fencing encloses a series of low stucco buildings.

Jackson would automatically be put in isolation for his own protection, Thomas said.

“Child molesters don’t do well in prison,” Thomas said.