INTRODUCTION:
Statistical data on homicide mortality have been prominent in current discussions about violence in Brazil. Young black men, especially from urban centers, are the main victims of homicide. The development and implementation of public policies to combat these high rates depend on the capacity for critical analysis of urban violence indicators. A Brazilian tool, created in 2016, essential for portraying and understanding the complexity of violence is the Atlas of Violence. The Atlas is a public portal with annual publications from the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) in partnership with the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, based on data from the Mortality Information System (SIM) and the Notifiable Diseases Information System (Sinan) of the Ministry of Health. This work proposes to analyze the results of these publications, focusing on homicide data according to race, gender, and age group, seeking to reflect on the phenomenon that disproportionately affects young people, especially Black youth.

METHODS:
This is a critical analysis of the literature, based on a bibliographic review of the Atlases of Violence published in Brazil between 2016 and 2025.

RESULTS:
The results demonstrate that young black men who are victims of lethal aggression typically have little access to education, live in the peripheries of large urban centers, and these regions are predominantly affected by armed conflicts caused by drug trafficking.

CONCLUSIONS:
Access to education, the job market, public policies to combat violence and encourage student retention, as well as police training, are factors that mitigate the problem. A major daily challenge has been to bring the debate about the processes of naturalization and criminalization surrounding young, black, and poor people to the forefront, and the importance of strategic actions to protect and guarantee the rights of this social group.