We still don’t know why Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw spent a month of his off-season in jail, but there are signs that we may soon find out — and that the time Bradshaw served wasn’t as hard as it would have been if he weren’t famous.

Michael Owens of the Bristol Herald Courier reports that Bradshaw got “star treatment,” which “angered both jailers and inmates alike.”

Per Owens, that star treatment included four hours of recreation time whereas other prisoners got one hour, a cell that kept him away from other inmates, and two trays of food at every meal while the other inmates got one. Owens also reports that Bradshaw was actually sentenced to 60 days in jail, but that Bradshaw was allowed to serve 30 during the slowest portion of the NFL off-season and will now get to wait until the 2009 off-season before he has to serve the remaining 30 days.

Jail employees also reportedly got Bradshaw’s autograph, even though Steve Clear, the jail’s deputy superintendent, said they were specifically told at the beginning of Bradshaw’s sentence not to.

Owens’ reporting is the best we’ve seen to date on Bradshaw’s jail sentence — it far exceeds the reporting done by all the major newspapers that cover the New York Giants. But it still doesn’t answer the fundamental question: Why was he in jail?

Owens is working on that, too. The Bristol Herald Courier is suing the county, saying it violated Virginia law by sealing Bradshaw’s records. The paper contends that although Bradshaw was originally placed on probation as a juvenile, records are only supposed to be sealed for people age 13 and younger, not for 22-year-olds like Bradshaw. A circuit judge is likely to rule on that today or tomorrow.