Eight out of ten homicide victims in Brazil in 2021 were Black, and the death rate among this group was three times that of the rest of the population.
In total, Blacks accounted for 79% of the 47.8 thousand deaths that year, considering the combined number of Black and mixed-race individuals, according to the classification by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
These figures are part of the 2023 Violence Atlas, published on Tuesday (5) by the Institute of Applied Economic Research and the Brazilian Forum of Public Security.
Compared to 2020, the number of murdered Blacks decreased by 3.5%—36,922 cases in 2021 compared to 38,274 in the previous year. The decrease is smaller than the overall population, which saw a 4.1% decline.
Black individuals comprise less than half of the deceased only in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (24%), Santa Catarina (25%), Paraná (40%), and São Paulo (49%).