 Shermain Miles — arrested 396 times — out of prison, hopes for new start By Stefano Esposito Staff Reporter 
 
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 Shermain Miles read her Bible on the train, ignoring the wind’s destruction outside as she returned to Chicago on Monday and prepared to pick up the pieces of her own shattered life. .” 
 
 The metal doors to Logan Correctional Center in Downstate Lincoln opened for Miles on Monday, after she served almost one year for her latest tangle with the law: assaulting Ald. She was headed Monday to a residential home for ex-inmates and says she's permanently given up drugs and alcohol. On her train journey home, Miles said that she's not a bad person but that alcohol had turned her "into a monster."
– It's hard to fathom, but a Chicago woman has managed to get herself arrested 396 times in the last 35 years, reports NBC Chicago. This week, 52-year-old Shermain Miles got released from jail to a residential home for ex-cons, and she told the Sun-Times she is determined to avoid yet another return trip by staying away from old haunts and bad influences. "I’m really not that bad a person," she says. "It was the alcohol I was drinking that turned me into a monster." Her offenses range from minor ones such as disorderly conduct to scarier ones such as an assault on a local alderman two years ago. “Hopefully, she’s seen the light and is tired of being incarcerated," says the chair of the state's Parole Review Board.