Boston police said they turn to their computers to seek out and shut down illegal massage parlors and prostitution houses in Allston-Brighton, where a john is more likely to look for a trick on Craigslist than a corner.

Despite the new tool for setting up stings, police said they are no closer to identifying possible human trafficking victims in the area than they were three years ago, though 50 illegal operations have been shuttered since.

Boston Police Department District D-14 officers monitor Craigslist.org, a free classified ads site, for leads on unlicensed massage parlors and “erotic services” to determine whether prostitution rings run in Allston qualify as sex slavery.

According to D-14 crime logs, officers have arrested more than 100 individuals involved in illegal massage and prostitution houses through the program, begun in April 2005. Records show six prostitution and illegal massage parlor stings since Jan. 28 resulting in 10 arrests, one of which targeted a transsexual male.

Sgt. James Fong, a BPD detective, said Allston-Brighton differs from other neighborhoods because most prostitution advertisements take place inside apartments, houses and hotels — not on the streets.

In their first sweep, officers arrested three women, one of whom had been labeled the “Queen of Craigslist.” Fong said they have arrested woman as young as 15 and old as 63, with demographics as varied as college students, mothers, even a limo company owner who “did this on the side.”

“Some of the advertisers are getting smart and use locations [in or] near Brookline, Newton, Cambridge and surrounding communities instead of Allston or Brighton, due to all of the arrests being made,” Fong said in an email.

Most East Coast Asian masseuses come from or have ties to Flushing, N.Y., Fong said. They do not exclusively target Craigslist advertisers, and he said in one case, officers arrested a female prostitute who had 12 cell phones, nine of which were listed in individual advertisements in the Boston Phoenix adult classifieds.

Fong said many of the women police arrest speak very little English, have limited education and few other job opportunities. Their pimps tell them police officers are bad people who will deport them so they will never see their families again, making the women distrustful and afraid, he said.

“We have seen many of the girls, most of whom are older women and who maybe at one time probably had been victims of human trafficking but now have taken their jobs as a job with benefits,” he said. “This is the only type of job that they know.”

Sgt. Kelley O’Connell, a member of the BPD Human Trafficking Task Force, said one or two women stay at a location for no longer than a week before others replace them. Officers want to arrest apartment owners and Craigslist advertisers who orchestrate prostitution rings, so police interrogate the women to get information about who is behind the operation, she said.

“They’re participating in this life but won’t tell us why or how,” O’Connell said.

Police then get search warrants for specific places, between five and 10 days after they first visit the women, to recover anything in the apartments for more information, she said. In one of the cases this year, prostitutes lived in apartments leased under their own names.

So far, police have given some women probation but no jail time. The operation deals on the lower end of the industry, O’Connell said. The women are charged but some do not show up in court.

“They typically don’t have status so they’re gone,” she said, adding that those with citizenship status who appear in court are not usually willing to talk.

Boston University sociology professor Peter Yeager said working on the lower level is often the only option local law enforcement has.

“Police can’t connect the dots if people won’t testify,” he said.

Yeager compared prostitution rings to other crime groups that make it hard to nab the head honcho — organized crime and drug dealing.

“Everything is set up to protect the boss,” he said. “Drug dealers use kids to make deliveries — the kids probably don’t even know the name of the boss.”

Those who police catch often get less punishment than the boss would, Yeager said.

Because victims can easily be roped back into the business, Yeager said the police could use green cards or citizenship as bargaining chips for foreign women who may be scared to cooperate with law enforcement.

“We can say, ‘You’re in a trap and we’ll help you get out of that trap,'” he said.

Fong said he does not want to see citizenship offered in exchange for human trafficking information – at best, he would consider temporary legal status for the duration of process.

“As with anything it can be and will be abused,” he said.