By David Giambusso and James Queally/The Star-Ledger

NEWARK — Homicides in Newark have spread through the city over the past 30 years like an infectious disease and can be tracked and treated like a public health issue with prevention, inoculation and treatment, according to a study by Michigan State University.

The study, among the first to track murder through the lens of medical research, is part of a widening trend among local leaders and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to treat violent crime like a medical condition.

Newark native Jesenia Pizarro and April Zeolis, professors of criminal justice at Michigan State, analyzed the 2,366 homicides that occurred in Newark between 1982 to 2008 and tracked how and where they spread throughout the city.

Their report, titled "Homicide as Infectious Disease," said the clusters originated in the Central Ward and moved south and west. Like other diseases, homicide clusters have a source, a mode of transmission and a susceptible population, the report said, indicating the violence erupted in the city’s high-rise housing complexes, and spread south and west as those complexes were destroyed, and poverty spread throughout the city.

"Many diseases have been tracked in this way, including most prominently cancer clusters," Zeoli said in an interview.

The research bolsters efforts by local leaders to combat crime outside of law enforcement.

"I just think that, nationally, people are beginning to recognize the kind of inter-relatedness of dealing with violence," said South Ward Councilman Ras Baraka, who has long called for violence to be dealt with not just by police, but with a battery of social services. "We can outline exactly where the crimes take place and we know every demographic about the people in the area."

Citing the coordination of agencies after Hurricane Sandy, Baraka said Newark should combat violence the same way.

"We began to identify the areas that were hit the hardest and attacked them with food, attacked them with light," he said, referring to Sandy. "That kind of logic has to be employed when you talk about crime in the city."

The report, published in Justice Quarterly, also identifies areas that were relatively immune from violence. Researchers hope to examine those areas and determine what makes populations more resistant or more vulnerable.

Similar to academics, city leaders and residents have known for awhile those factors usually include poverty, broken homes and poor education.

"(Residents in depressed areas) may feel more isolated. They may use homicide as their own tool for social control," Zeoli said. "You may fear for your life and you may arm up."

The paper also shows homicide clusters existed before clusters of gangs or an influx of firearms.

"What it really tells us is that firearms and gangs are not the only sources of this homicide infection," Zeoli said. "There was something there before."

The two said their paper is the first step in a long-term project, which they hope will shed light on the causes and prevention of violence in Newark.

"What, ideally, we would like to do is get back to before the race riots and almost get to case zero," Pizarro said.

Her upbringing and love of the city is what led Pizarro, also a graduate of Rutgers, to select Newark for the study.

"I wanted to do something for my community and my city," she said.

While Baraka praised the work of the two researchers, others were less enthused.

"This is an important step forward in the method by which we map changes in violent behavior, however it does not extend to the step of saying how to inoculate people against violence or how to prevent the violence from spreading," said Rutgers University criminal justice professor Wayne Fisher.

Fisher said while the cluster maps are a useful way to track violence, simply knowing the general area where a homicide will occur is not useful to police.

"Suppose that you can predict that it’s going to spread into a given area, what does that mean?" he asked.

A long time proponent of classifying violence as a public health issue, Regional Medical Examiner Roger Mitchell applauded the report’s focus on the prevention of killings rather than responding to them.

nj.com-phone-app-pic3.jpg

STAY CONNECTED 24/7

Download our

free NJ.com mobile and tablet apps

to keep up with the latest New Jersey news, sports and entertainment.

"Any work that’s being done to get better understanding about violence and how it is merging in urban communities is welcomed... so that everyone that is in the field can start looking at this violence problem through a different lens," he said.

Mitchell praised the report for looking beyond the stereotypical causes associated with violence — gang and drug activity — and looking deeper at the societal issues in Newark that sometimes give rise to bloodshed.

Police Director Samuel DeMaio, who helped the researchers compile their data, said the report supports his position that Newark has to use alternative crime fighting methods.

"I think what it shows us is that the answer to eliminating the problem is not just getting people off the street because it’s not going to change the social behavior," DeMaio said. "A person that’s a drug dealer is not going to change from being arrested. What it shows us is we need to start way earlier and more on the social end of it. We have to get these kids before they turn to that way of life."

Follow @starledger

RELATED COVERAGE:

• The Killing Cycle: Inside story of the Essex County homicide squad as it tries to break the murder chain