# Jan Vishwas Bill 2026: India's second decriminalisation wave

**TL;DR:** The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026 is the second big wave of decriminalisation in Indian business law. It amends roughly 80 central Acts run by 23 ministries, touching 784 provisions, of which the government says 717 are decriminalised and 67 are eased for living. It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 27 March 2026, passed the Lok Sabha on 1 April 2026, and passed the Rajya Sabha on 2 April 2026. The core move is the same one the [Jan Vishwas Act, 2023](https://egazette.gov.in/WriteReadData/2023/248047.pdf) made for 183 provisions in 42 Acts: take minor, technical, and procedural offences out of the criminal courts and turn them into monetary penalties decided by an adjudicating officer. For a first or minor lapse you may get a warning or an improvement notice instead of a punishment. The upside is fewer founders and shopkeepers facing jail for paperwork mistakes. The worry is that swapping prosecution for fines can hand wide discretion to officials and let well-funded firms treat a penalty as a cost of business. This guide walks through what changes, how it builds on 2023, the real examples, and the catch.

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## On this page

- [What the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 changes](#what-the-jan-vishwas-bill-2026-changes)
- [Where the idea came from: the 2023 first wave](#where-the-idea-came-from-the-2023-first-wave)
- [From the 2025 draft to the 2026 Act](#from-the-2025-draft-to-the-2026-act)
- [The four methods of decriminalisation](#the-four-methods-of-decriminalisation)
- [Real examples: what moves from jail to fine](#real-examples-what-moves-from-jail-to-fine)
- [First wave versus second wave, side by side](#first-wave-versus-second-wave-side-by-side)
- [The business and compliance angle](#the-business-and-compliance-angle)
- [The accountability worry no one should ignore](#the-accountability-worry-no-one-should-ignore)
- [What this means for lawyers and litigants](#what-this-means-for-lawyers-and-litigants)
- [How Niyam helps you track decriminalisation reforms](#how-niyam-helps-you-track-decriminalisation-reforms)
- [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions)

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## What the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 changes

Start with the name, because it tells you the design. "Jan Vishwas" means "people's trust," and the legislation is built on the idea that the state should trust honest businesses by default and punish them as criminals only when they actually deserve it. The 2026 version is the larger of two waves. According to the [PRS Legislative Research bill page](https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-jan-vishwas-amendment-of-provisions-bill-2026), it modifies about 80 central Acts and replaces a long list of criminal offences with civil penalties.

The headline figures come from the government's own framing. The Bill covers 784 provisions across the statutes it touches. Of these, 717 are decriminalised and 67 are changed to make daily compliance easier, a breakdown set out in the [Press Information Bureau release on the Bill](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2248925&reg=3&lang=1). The Acts sit under 23 ministries and departments, which tells you the sweep is horizontal rather than focused on one sector.

The mechanism matters as much as the count. When an offence is decriminalised here, it usually does not vanish. It changes who decides and what the consequence is. Instead of a police case, a magistrate, and the threat of imprisonment, you get an adjudicating officer who can impose a money penalty, with an appeal to a designated appellate authority. The Bill also writes in a graded approach for first-time and minor breaches, so a small lapse can draw a warning or an improvement notice before any penalty bites.

The timeline is recent and worth fixing in your memory. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 27 March 2026, cleared the Lok Sabha on 1 April 2026, and cleared the Rajya Sabha on 2 April 2026, as the PRS tracker records. It was moved by Jitin Prasada, the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, the same ministry that drove the first wave.

One number puts the ambition in scale. The 2026 Bill alone decriminalises more than three times the provisions the 2023 Act did, and it does so across roughly twice as many statutes. This is not a tidy-up. It is a deliberate attempt to pull criminal liability out of the everyday running of a regulated business.

## Where the idea came from: the 2023 first wave

The 2026 Bill does not appear from nowhere. It extends a project that began with the [Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023](https://egazette.gov.in/WriteReadData/2023/248047.pdf), notified as Act No. 18 of 2023 on 11 August 2023. That first law decriminalised 183 provisions in 42 central Acts administered by 19 ministries and departments, a scope confirmed by the [PIB release on the Lok Sabha passage in 2023](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1943393).

The 2023 Act set the template every later wave copies. Its drafters used several tools at once. Some provisions lost both imprisonment and fine. Some lost imprisonment but kept the fine. Some converted imprisonment and fine into a single penalty decided administratively. A few added compounding, which lets a person settle a minor offence by paying a sum rather than facing trial. The Act also created adjudicating officers and appellate authorities to run the new penalty system, and built in a periodic increase in fines so the amounts would not wither with inflation.

The Acts it touched were a cross-section of the regulated economy. The first wave amended the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Patents Act, 1970, the Trade Marks Act, 1999, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and a cluster of environmental laws including the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. In several of these, an offence that once carried a jail term became a matter of paying a penalty.

The Patents Act change is a clean illustration. Under the 2023 Act, the offence of refusing or failing to supply required information had imprisonment swapped for a penalty, and the separate offence of falsely suggesting a connection with the patent office was removed altogether. None of these were the kind of wrongdoing that a sensible person thinks belongs in a criminal court. They were the regulatory underbrush that had built up over decades of statute-writing, where Parliament reached for "imprisonment up to six months" almost as a reflex.

If you want the wider context of how India has been rewriting its criminal statutes in the same period, the overhaul of the core penal codes is covered in [the new criminal laws: BNS, BNSS and BSA explained](/blog/new-criminal-laws-bns-bnss-bsa). Jan Vishwas runs alongside that project, but it works on the regulatory and commercial statutes rather than the general criminal law.

## From the 2025 draft to the 2026 Act

The path from idea to enacted law in this second wave was not a single step. It moved through a 2025 draft, a parliamentary committee, and a withdrawal before the final 2026 version passed.

The first attempt was the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, introduced in the Lok Sabha on 18 August 2025. It was a smaller instrument. As the [PRS page for the 2025 Bill](https://prsindia.org/billtrack/the-jan-vishwas-amendment-of-provisions-bill-2025) records, it set out to amend about 16 to 17 central Acts. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal described the draft as decriminalising 288 provisions across 16 central Acts under 10 ministries, building directly on the 2023 law, in a [post on X marking the introduction](https://x.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1957810616141508740).

That draft did not become law in its original shape. It was sent to a Select Committee of the Lok Sabha chaired by the MP Tejasvi Surya. The committee did not simply rubber-stamp it. It held 49 sittings, examined the Acts before it, and then went further, recommending decriminalisation across dozens of additional central Acts. The committee submitted its report on 13 March 2026.

The government then took the unusual route of withdrawing the 2025 Bill on 17 March 2026 and replacing it with a far larger one. The result was the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026, which absorbed the committee's expanded list and grew from roughly 17 Acts to about 80. You can read the actual statutory language in the [text of the 2026 Bill hosted by PRS](https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/bills_parliament/2026/Jan_Vishwas_Bill_2026_Text.pdf).

The process detail is not trivia. It explains why the 2026 numbers dwarf the 2025 ones. The committee stage, often treated as a formality, is where the scope tripled. For a litigant or compliance head, that means the operative reform to read is the 2026 Act, not the 2025 draft that the news cycle first reported.

## The four methods of decriminalisation

Decriminalisation sounds like one thing. In practice the Bill does it in several distinct ways, and the difference decides what your exposure looks like after the change. Knowing which method applies to your offence is the whole game.

The first method is converting imprisonment to a monetary penalty. The offence stays on the books, but the punishment shifts from a jail term decided by a court to a sum decided by an adjudicating officer. This is the most common move and the one that gives the reform its character.

The second is the fine-only conversion, where imprisonment is dropped and only a fine or penalty remains. The third is outright omission, where the offence is deleted entirely because Parliament has decided the conduct no longer needs any sanction. The fourth, and the most citizen-friendly, is graded or progressive enforcement, where the law gives you a warning or an improvement notice for a first lapse and escalates only if you repeat it.

The graded model is the headline feature the government emphasises. The Bill is described as resting on a logic of warning before punishment for first-time and minor lapses, proportionate penalties calibrated to how serious the breach is, and faster resolution through adjudicating officers and appellate authorities rather than crowded criminal courts. The [Drishti IAS analysis of the Bill](https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/jan-vishwas-amendment-of-provisions-bill-2026) sets out this trust-based framing and the enforcement architecture behind it.

There is a quieter fifth shift hiding inside all of this: adjudication instead of prosecution. Even where a penalty is large, the forum changes. A businessperson now answers to a departmental officer and an appellate authority, not to a criminal court with the power to send them to prison. That is a real change in the texture of regulatory risk, and the [iPleaders explainer on the 2026 Act](https://blog.ipleaders.in/jan-vishwas-act-2026/) groups the changes along these same lines.

## Real examples: what moves from jail to fine

Abstractions are easy to nod along to. The examples are where you see the size of the change. Three are worth setting out because they show the range, from consumer goods to weights and measures to highway safety.

Take the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. Manufacturing or selling cosmetics in breach of the Act was punishable with imprisonment up to one year, a fine up to twenty thousand rupees, or both. The Bill replaces that with a civil penalty of one lakh rupees or three times the value of the confiscated cosmetics, whichever is higher. Notice what happened. Jail is gone, but the money figure jumped sharply. Decriminalisation here is not leniency on the wallet. It is a swap of liberty risk for a heavier financial one.

The Legal Metrology Act, 2009 shows the graded model at work. This is the law that governs weights, measures, and the accuracy of what a shop or factory sells you. The Bill introduces improvement notices, so the use of a non-standard weight or measure draws an improvement notice on the first contravention rather than an immediate fine. A second contravention attracts a penalty up to one lakh rupees, and each later one doubles the previous penalty, capped at five lakh rupees. A small importer or trader who slips once now gets a chance to fix the problem before any money changes hands.

The third example points the other way, toward sectors where safety is the whole point. For breaches connected to highway safety, the Bill replaces imprisonment with a civil penalty in a band running from ten lakh rupees up to one crore rupees. The penalty is steep precisely because the conduct can endanger people, which is the government's answer to the charge that decriminalisation goes soft on safety.

Across these cases a pattern repeats. Where the offence is paperwork, the penalty is modest and often staged. Where the offence can hurt someone, the penalty is large even though the jail term is gone. The reform is less "everything becomes a small fine" and more "the threat changes shape, and the size depends on the danger."

For comparison, the regulated-product world this touches overlaps with consumer law, where penalties and product-safety duties already sit. If you handle that side, [the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 explained](/blog/consumer-protection-act-2019) sets out the parallel framework of consumer rights and liabilities that survives untouched by Jan Vishwas.

## First wave versus second wave, side by side

The two waves share a design but differ in scale and refinement. Holding them in one frame shows how the project grew.

| Feature | Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 (first wave) | Jan Vishwas Bill, 2026 (second wave) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Central Acts amended | 42 | About 80 |
| Provisions decriminalised | 183 | 717 (of 784 touched) |
| Ministries and departments | 19 | 23 |
| Graded warning or improvement notice | ✗ Limited use | ✓ Built in as a stated pillar |
| Adjudicating officers and appellate authorities | ✓ Introduced | ✓ Continued and expanded |
| Status | Notified as Act No. 18 of 2023 | Passed both Houses, 2 April 2026 |

The next table contrasts the old criminal route with the new civil-penalty route, because that is the practical change a regulated business feels.

| What you face | Old criminal route | New civil-penalty route |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Who decides | Magistrate or criminal court | Departmental adjudicating officer |
| Worst outcome | Imprisonment plus fine | Monetary penalty, sometimes large |
| First minor lapse | ✗ Prosecution can still follow | ✓ Warning or improvement notice possible |
| Criminal record | ✓ Conviction recorded | ✗ No criminal conviction |
| Appeal | Criminal appeal in court hierarchy | Appeal to a designated appellate authority |
| Speed | ✗ Often years in trial courts | ✓ Faster departmental adjudication, in theory |

The tables make the trade visible. You give up the looming threat of a criminal record and jail. You take on a system run by officials, where the penalties can be heavy and the quality of the appeal depends on how well the new authorities are staffed and run.

## The business and compliance angle

The reform's stated purpose is ease of doing business, and that is the lens most coverage uses. The argument is straightforward. India's commercial statutes accumulated thousands of imprisonment clauses over the decades, many attached to filing errors, late disclosures, and technical breaches that no rational system would treat as crimes. The threat of jail for paperwork raises the cost and fear of running a small business, and gives inspectors leverage that invites harassment and rent-seeking.

Jan Vishwas tries to remove that fear at the bottom of the pyramid while keeping real sanctions for real harm. The minister moving the Bill, Jitin Prasada, framed it as a way to promote ease of doing business, reduce litigation, and create a less punitive regulatory environment, as reported in [the National Herald's account of the debate](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/politics/jan-vishwas-amendment-bill-revives-accountability-debate-as-govt-moves-to-dilute-criminal-penalties). Piyush Goyal, the Commerce Minister, has cast both waves as part of a continuous reform agenda that began with the 2023 Act, in his [post on X about the second wave](https://x.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1957810616141508740).

The likely beneficiaries are micro, small, and medium enterprises. A small importer who once risked prosecution for a record-keeping slip under the Legal Metrology Act now gets an improvement notice and time to fix it. A small manufacturer who would have faced a criminal complaint for a technical breach now faces a defined penalty and a departmental forum. That removes a category of fear that disproportionately fell on people who could least afford a lawyer and a trial.

This is not the only front on which India has been cutting compliance load for business. The consolidation of labour law into [the four labour codes of 2025](/blog/four-labour-codes-2025) runs on a similar instinct, replacing a thicket of older statutes with a smaller, more predictable set of obligations. Read together, Jan Vishwas and the labour codes are two halves of the same ease-of-doing-business push: one shrinks criminal exposure, the other shrinks the number of laws to comply with.

There is a real efficiency case for taking minor matters out of criminal courts. India's trial courts carry an enormous pendency, and clogging them with technical regulatory offences helps no one. Moving those matters to administrative adjudication, if the adjudication is competent and fair, frees court time for cases that genuinely need a judge.

## The accountability worry no one should ignore

A legal product should not sell a reform without its risks, and this reform has a serious one. The central objection is that decriminalisation can quietly become deregulation, and that swapping prosecution for fines weakens deterrence and shifts power to officials.

The first concern is that a penalty is a price, and a price can be paid. A large, well-funded company can treat a fine as a line item, a cost of doing business rather than a reason to comply. The same penalty that ruins a small trader is a rounding error to a big firm. Critics quoted in [the National Herald report](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/politics/jan-vishwas-amendment-bill-revives-accountability-debate-as-govt-moves-to-dilute-criminal-penalties) made this point directly, warning that monetary penalties can be absorbed by large corporations while smaller firms feel the impact more sharply, and that excessive decriminalisation may weaken institutional safeguards.

The second concern is discretion. Moving from criminal courts to departmental adjudication concentrates power in the hands of adjudicating officers. If those officers apply penalties inconsistently across states and ministries, or if the appellate authorities are understaffed and slow, the system can become arbitrary. The Drishti analysis flags exactly this, warning that wide powers without strong oversight risk turning trust-based governance into discretion-based governance, and that escalating penalties without matching public capacity raise rule-of-law concerns.

A third concern is equality. The Bill mostly applies the same penalty bands to everyone, regardless of capacity to pay. Some jurisdictions use income-linked or turnover-linked fines so that a penalty stings the rich and the poor in proportion. A flat penalty does not, which is a substantive equality problem when the same number is trivial to one party and crushing to another.

These are not reasons to reject the reform. They are reasons to watch how it is implemented. The honest summary is that Jan Vishwas trades one set of problems, criminal overreach and harassment of small businesses, for another, the risk of weak deterrence and unchecked official discretion. Whether that trade pays off depends entirely on whether the new adjudicating officers and appellate authorities are well-resourced, transparent, and consistent. The statute can promise faster and fairer resolution. Only the administration can deliver it.

## What this means for lawyers and litigants

For a practitioner, the immediate change is in where the work happens and what the exposure is. A matter that would once have been a criminal complaint, with bail, charge, and trial, may now be an adjudication before a departmental officer with a penalty and an appeal. The skill set shifts toward administrative and regulatory practice, toward reading penalty provisions, improvement-notice procedures, and appellate authority rules rather than the criminal code.

The first practical task is to check whether a given offence has actually been decriminalised, and from when. Passage by both Houses is not the same as commencement. The 2026 Act, like the 2023 one, is brought into force in stages through government notifications, so the date a particular amendment takes effect can differ from the date Parliament passed it. Acting on the wrong assumption about whether an offence is still criminal is a costly mistake.

The second task is to map the new forum and the new limits. For each amended provision you need to know the penalty band, whether a warning or improvement notice applies to a first lapse, who the adjudicating officer is, and where the appeal lies. The text of the 2026 Bill, available through [PRS](https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/bills_parliament/2026/Jan_Vishwas_Bill_2026_Text.pdf), is the place to confirm the operative language rather than relying on summaries.

There is also a transitional question that will generate litigation. What happens to cases already pending in criminal courts when an offence is decriminalised? General principles on beneficial amendments and the treatment of pending prosecutions will be argued, and how courts handle that overlap will shape early disputes. This is the kind of cross-cutting issue where reading the controlling judgments carefully matters, and [how to read a judgment](/blog/how-to-read-a-judgment) sets out a method for finding the ratio without getting lost.

Finally, decriminalisation does not touch every commercial offence, and the debate over which offences should be criminal at all continues elsewhere. The long-running argument over [cheque bounce under Section 138 of the NI Act](/blog/cheque-bounce-section-138-ni-act), one of the most litigated quasi-criminal provisions in the country, sits in the same conversation about whether the criminal process is the right tool for commercial defaults. Jan Vishwas answers that question for hundreds of provisions. It leaves others for another day.

## How Niyam helps you track decriminalisation reforms

Reforms like Jan Vishwas are hard to follow precisely because they are spread across roughly 80 statutes and brought into force piece by piece. The question you actually need answered is narrow and specific: is this offence, in this Act, still criminal today, and what is the penalty now? Answering it means finding the right amending provision, checking the commencement notification, and reading any judgment that has interpreted the change.

That is the kind of grounded research [Niyam](https://app.niyam.ai/register) is built for. You can ask in plain English, such as "what does the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 change in the Legal Metrology Act" or "which Drugs and Cosmetics Act offences were decriminalised," and get an answer tied to real sources you can open and read, rather than a confident guess. When a reform turns on whether an amendment is in force or how a court has read it, that grounding is the difference between advice you can rely on and advice you cannot.

Niyam's judgment search and AI legal research also help you check the case law that grows around a new statute, so you can see how courts treat pending prosecutions and transitional questions as they are decided. If you want to understand the broader approach, [AI legal research in India](/blog/ai-legal-research-india) explains how research grounded in real Indian sources differs from a generic chatbot. You can also use [Niyam's comparison page](/compare) to see how it stacks up against other tools.

Indian legal research should be fast and anchored in real statutes and judgments, not invented ones. That is the standard Niyam holds itself to, which matters most when the law is changing under your feet.

### Start for ₹100

Track the Jan Vishwas reforms and check any provision against real sources. For ₹100 you get credits to run research grounded in Indian statutes and judgments, with every answer cited to something you can read. [Create your account and start for ₹100](https://app.niyam.ai/register).

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## Frequently asked questions

**What is the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2026?**

It is a single piece of legislation that amends roughly 80 central Acts at once to decriminalise or rationalise minor offences. According to the government, it touches 784 provisions, decriminalising 717 of them and easing 67 others for daily living. It is the second and larger wave of a decriminalisation project that began with the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023.

**When was the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 passed?**

It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 27 March 2026, passed the Lok Sabha on 1 April 2026, and passed the Rajya Sabha on 2 April 2026, as recorded by PRS Legislative Research. Like the 2023 Act, its provisions are expected to be brought into force in stages through government notifications, so the commencement date for a particular amendment can differ from the date of passage.

**How is this different from the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023?**

The 2023 Act decriminalised 183 provisions across 42 central Acts under 19 ministries. The 2026 Bill is much larger, covering about 80 Acts under 23 ministries and decriminalising 717 provisions. The 2026 version also leans more heavily on graded enforcement, with warnings and improvement notices for first or minor lapses before any penalty applies.

**Does decriminalisation mean the offence disappears?**

Usually not. In most cases the offence stays on the books, but the punishment changes from imprisonment decided by a criminal court to a monetary penalty decided by a departmental adjudicating officer, with an appeal to a designated authority. Some offences are removed entirely, and some keep only a fine, but the common pattern is a shift from jail to penalty rather than an end to liability.

**Which Acts does the Jan Vishwas Bill 2026 amend?**

It amends a wide cross-section of regulatory and commercial statutes across 23 ministries. Named examples include the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, the Copyright Act, 1957, and the Patents Act, 1970. The full list is in the text of the Bill published by PRS.

**Will fines be smaller than the old punishments?**

Not always. Decriminalisation removes the risk of jail, but the monetary figure often rises. Under the Bill, a cosmetics manufacturing breach that once carried up to one year's imprisonment and a fine up to twenty thousand rupees becomes a civil penalty of one lakh rupees or three times the value of the confiscated goods, whichever is higher. The penalty for highway safety breaches runs from ten lakh up to one crore rupees. The trade is liberty risk for financial risk, and the financial risk can be heavy.

**What is an improvement notice under the Bill?**

It is a chance to fix a lapse before being penalised. Under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 as amended, a first contravention such as using a non-standard weight or measure draws an improvement notice requiring you to correct the problem within a set time. A second contravention attracts a penalty up to one lakh rupees, and each subsequent one doubles the previous penalty, capped at five lakh rupees.

**Why did the 2025 Bill become the 2026 Bill?**

The Jan Vishwas Bill, 2025, introduced on 18 August 2025, covered about 16 to 17 Acts. It was sent to a Select Committee of the Lok Sabha chaired by Tejasvi Surya, which held 49 sittings, reported on 13 March 2026, and recommended decriminalisation across many more Acts. The government withdrew the 2025 Bill on 17 March 2026 and replaced it with the much larger 2026 Bill that absorbed the committee's expanded list.

**Who decides penalties now instead of a court?**

An adjudicating officer appointed under the relevant Act decides the penalty, and an appeal lies to a designated appellate authority rather than to a criminal court in the first instance. This administrative model was introduced in the 2023 Act and is continued and expanded by the 2026 Bill.

**What are the main criticisms of the Bill?**

Critics argue that turning crimes into fines weakens deterrence, because well-funded firms can absorb a penalty as a business cost while small firms cannot. They also warn that concentrating decisions in adjudicating officers risks inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement if oversight and appellate capacity are weak, and that flat penalties ignore differences in ability to pay. These concerns were raised in Parliament and in policy analysis of the Bill.

**Does the Bill affect criminal cases already pending?**

This is a transitional question that will be tested in litigation. When an offence is decriminalised, the treatment of prosecutions already pending depends on the wording of the amendment and on general principles about beneficial changes in the law. Because commencement is staged by notification, both the effective date and the fate of pending cases need to be checked provision by provision rather than assumed.

**How can I check whether a specific offence is still criminal?**

Read the operative language in the 2026 Bill or Act for that provision, confirm whether the amendment has been notified into force, and check any judgment that has interpreted it. Because the reform spans about 80 statutes and commences in stages, summaries are not enough. Tools like Niyam let you ask about a specific Act and get an answer grounded in the real statute and judgments, which is the safest way to avoid acting on an offence that has changed or one that has not changed yet.