Chiron Francis writes about the dreaded ritual of prison lockdowns, when cells are searched, possessions are confiscated, and the few things people have managed to make their own can disappear in an instant.

Prison lockdowns are standard procedure. A lockdown can occur for a number of reasons, all relating to security. But there’s a distinct lockdown that’s like no other: annual lockdown.

Prison lockdowns take place twice a year. It’s meant to control contraband, increase the safety of COs and inmates, and reduce the accumulation of hoarded items. The realistic purpose of this protocol is to humiliate, degrade, and discourage.

From the word “annual,” a cognizant person should have already detected the impracticality of the process. How can something annual occur twice a year? Welcome to TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice], where justice is administered by hicks and bureaucrats.

Two months in advance, someone will say, “Lockdown is coming!” That statement spreads like wildfire. Rumors travel fast via inmate.com. Some of the news is true. Most of it’s fake. But when prison lockdown is mentioned, everybody knows it’s real.

Those who have been on the same prison unit for more than a year start doing their calculations. An estimated month is determined, then a week. It’s all guesswork. Not even the guards know what day lockdown will fall on—until the morning of.

Kitchen staff and their officers are some of the first to get a whiff of when it’s coming. They’re ordered to sack up sandwiches, raisins, and boxed cereal in mass quantities. Even the bagged food isn’t a concrete indication of the day. That secret is kept by the wardens.

Still, as confidential as it may seem, it’s anything but. Inmates have been expecting their internment for at least a month.

Between the anxiety and anticipation, we start to prepare. Preparations can mean different things for different inmates. Collectively, our concern is contraband—the stuff we’ve accumulated that makes our stints comfortable and bearable. Some contraband is acquired out of necessity, while other contraband stems from greed and the desire to have control over others.

My bootlegged items consist of desktop materials: paperclips, markers, white-out, and small homemade screwdrivers. My screwdrivers are crafted out of paperclips and small screws. I use them to tighten eyeglasses and repair watches—my side hustles.

Others possess more illicit items: pornography, TV remotes, telephones, weapons, and drugs. Those inmates are cunning enough to get those commodities inside a fortified prison. You best believe they’re just as crafty at concealing them. Especially since we’ve been given a month’s notice.

Everyone acts surprised when lockdown is finally here. People wake up and are told, “All classes, work schedules, and unit activities are suspended.” Then we go back to sleep.

Lockdown is another prison holiday. It’s an all-paid, labor-free extravaganza.

All food, medication, and mail are hand-delivered to the inmate’s cell. I like to think of it as room service. It’s amusing to watch guards become visibly irritated after taking over all of our duties. I guess after sitting on your rump earning a living, actual work is frustrating.

Inmates aren’t allowed in the hallways at any time without an escort. The only reasons an inmate may be in the hallway during lockdown are medical, disciplinary, or visitation.

Still, prison lockdown arrives with mixed emotions. Most of us dread the shakedown process. Packing up all of our possessions and hauling them down to the gym is agonizing.

Read books are dead weight. Extra clothes, bedding, towels, bowls, and cups are discarded beforehand. The elderly and disabled struggle to carry their loads. Sometimes a guard will provide a wheeled cart to assist them.

But as soon as the guard looks the other way and the handicapped person directs their attention elsewhere, lazy and inconsiderate inmates pile their things onto the cart, taking advantage of the free ride. Ironic?

In the shakedown area, some unknown correctional officer, industry personnel, education staff, and a couple more hardasses conduct the actual searches. They set up long tables along one of the gym’s four walls. Next to them are 55-gallon plastic barrels that serve as trash cans.

It’s there where all the things that made prison life tolerable end up. One man’s treasure is another man’s trash.

Consider it the luck of the draw if you get a sympathetic search officer, a CO who will overlook clear plastic storage bags, handmade soap, rubber bands, or an electronic device without a receipt—an appliance that may have been bought or given as a gift by someone who has since gone home.

To a free-world person, some of these things may seem like garbage. To a prisoner, they’re diamonds in the dirt.

Once every inmate from the block is in the gym, the doors are sealed.

Each person is separated from their belongings. We’re ordered to form rows by sitting on the cold floor, facing the nearest wall and away from the activity. We aren’t allowed to watch the process. A guard stands over us, doing a horrible job of keeping inmates in compliance.

Randomly, inmates dressed in our white prison garb are plucked from the fold. Like chickens on their way to slaughter, we’re picked. We squawk in protest as we grab our baggage and flutter over to a chopping table.

At the slayer’s altar, we’re given a wooden crate 12 inches wide, 12 inches deep, and two and a half feet long. We’re told to place everything in it that we intend to keep. Commissary, legal material, and electronics are excluded from the box.

Then we’re ordered to spread one of our two bed sheets on the floor in front of the table. We’re told to sit on the outer edge of the sheet, facing away from the table.

In the past, some inmates have attacked guards for destroying personal items—things that inmates have come to cherish. We don’t have much here. The smallest things sometimes hold the greatest value.

Guards go through our belongings with total disregard for a person’s privacy. Nothing is sacred to them. Family photos and letters are tossed carelessly into the growing pile of soap, clothing, commissary items, and toiletries.

All we hear is our lives being tossed around by a stranger into one big pile of nothing.

The items on the sheet are what remain with us. The CO will yell, “OK, you can go. Hurry up and get your shit.”

The first feeling I get after the torment has stopped is a sense of relief.

It’s over.

When I turn around and see all the things I hold dear heaped together, I swallow my tears. I can only compare the feeling to returning home after a natural disaster has ripped apart the neighborhood.

Like hobos, we quickly tie together the corners of our sheets. The strong and proud sling their bundles over their shoulders and exit the gym. The weak and heartbroken drag their open sheets across the dirty gymnasium floor, find a corner, and try to restore a sense of dignity.

Shaken down to the core of our existence.

Our reality is just an accumulation of imported plastic, synthetic memories, and institutional fabrications of a life after prison lockdown.