The article discusses the institution which was introduced in the Act of 20 February 2015 (Dz. U. poz. 396) in Art. 37a C.C. It has been examined the views according to which Art. 37a C.C. is: 1) modifier of statutory penalty range; 2) directive of judicial penalty, also known as „exchange” of the penalty; 3) exchangeable sanction which is the directive of statutory penalty range; 4) extraordinary punishment not being an extraordinary mitigation of penalty; 5) a kind of extraordinary mitigation of penalty. Based on the method of critical analysis of the views on the legal nature of art. 37a C.C., which can be found in the literature, it has been found that the norm included in art. 37a C.C. is modifier of statutory penalty range – it means a modification of the statutory penalty range that determines the range of standardizing the sanctioning norm, decoded based on the sanction resulting from the regulation establishing an offence, and it introduces alternative statutory range.