A British Sunday newspaper yesterday faced criticism after it "named and shamed" a string of convicted paedophiles.
In the wake of the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne, the News of the World has printed the names and photographs of 49 known sex offenders.
The newspaper's front page warned: "Everyone in Britain has a child sex offender living within one mile of their home.
Their exact addresses were not given but the town or the district of the city where they live was printed.
The News of the World said there were 110,000 proven paedophiles in the UK and it would not stop its campaign until they had all been named.
The newspaper said the move was aimed at alerting and warning the public about those named and was "absolutely not a charter for vigilantes".
But the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (Nacro) condemned the move as "grossly irresponsible". Its policy director, Mr Paul Cavadino, said: "It could drive these offenders underground and seriously damage the efforts of the police and probation services to keep them under supervision.
"Past experience shows that when paedophiles are publicly identified in this way some of them go to ground fearing vigilante attacks.
"They move elsewhere and change their names, making it difficult or impossible for the police to keep track of them.
"There is a real danger that the News of the World's action will increase risk to children rather than reduce it."
Ms Valerie Howarth, chief executive of the Childline charity, said: "The police and social services have programmes for handling paedophiles in the community and they inform communities when they feel there is a danger to them.
"It is concerning when laws and provisions put in place to deal with this situation are bypassed or risk people taking the law into their own hands.
"You risk innocent members of the public being wrongly identified and targeted and you risk driving paedophiles to move from place to place, possibly becoming more dangerous."
The News of the World defended its decision to publish.
A spokeswoman said: "We disagree with Nacro. Our research shows that under the arrangements whereby the police and the probation services working hand in hand are meant to monitor convicted paedophiles, the fact is that at least 64 per cent continue to re-offend.
"Through no fault of the police or the probation services the system quite simply fails."
Posting violent sex offenders' names on the Internet in one American state had drastically reduced the re-offending rate, she added. The spokeswoman said: "Throughout its history the News of the World has supported law and order, that is our position today. "There is no room for vigilante action in a civilised society."
The paper's front page said: "The murder of Sarah Payne has proved police monitoring of these perverts is not enough.
"So we are revealing who they are and where they are. . . starting today".
The News of the World also said that Sarah Payne's parents, Michael and Sara, were backing their "For Sarah" campaign to make life sentences for child sex offenders mean life.