52-year-old woman is going to jail for a record 397th time

A Chicago woman who vowed to turn her life around after her 396th arrest was collared again last week — just one month after she was released from a one-year stint in jail for attacking a city alderman.

Shermain Miles, 52, allegedly swiped a 63-year-old man’s keys before police found her nearby drinking and “engaging in a physical altercation with a male companion” on Dec. 18, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Shermain Miles told a reporter that she was going to turn her life around after serving nearly a year behind bars for her 396th arrest.

Miles said that her use of drugs and alcohol has caused many of her problems with the law.
Miles was booked on several charges that include misdemeanor battery, theft and drinking in public, officials said.
The woman told the newspaper last month that she was tired of spending time behind bars and was aiming to turn her life around.
Miles has been arrested a whipping 397 times over the past 35 years.

Miles, who was convicted of assaulting Ald. James Cappleman of the city’s 46th Ward in 2012, claimed she was going to quit drugs and alcohol — the two things she blamed for causing most of her problems with the law.
She said she was going to avoid the places where she may be tempted to fall back on her old ways.
Miles’ arrest history dates back to 1978.

“I’m just not going back around there,” she told the paper after her release from the Illinois Department of Corrections on Nov. 18. I can love (my friends) from a distance,” she said. “Anybody that’s drugging, I can’t be around.”

But it was only a couple of weeks later that Miles, who was staying at a residential home for ex-inmates, began visiting her old haunts, CBS News reported.

When told of her recent arrest, Cappleman told the Chicago Sun-Times only: “It’s sad.”
: Daily News