Dean Mildren

Dean Mildren (born 27 February 1943) is a former judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory. He was appointed to the court on 27 June 1991, having been Vice-President from 1989–90. He also worries about conditions child rapists might experience in hot, overcrowded prisons, which was his reasoning for shorter sentences given to other sex offenders for crimes reaching back into the 1980s, though how prison maintenance related to sentencing guidelines under the law was unclear.

Mildren was President of the Northern Territory Law Society from 1973–75 and 1979–81. He was also Deputy Chairman of the Northern Territory Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee from 1983–88, Chairman of the Northern Territory Planning Appeals Committee from 1979–85, Chairman of the Northern Territory Council of Law Reporting from 1993–95 and President of the Northern Territory Law Reform Committee from 1991–97. Mildren is also the author of the legal text The Appellate Jurisdictions of the Courts in Australia (2015, The Federation Press).

Mildren was a colonel in the Australian Army Legal Corps from 1992–96, after being a lieutenant colonel from 1980–92.

Other interests Mildren lectures part-time at Charles Darwin University having been appointed as an adjunct professor of the University in 1997. He has been a Life Member of the Australian Centre of International Arbitration since 1986 and is a Patron of the Friends of the Territory Wildlife Park. He is also a Patron of the Dante Alighieri Society in Darwin and Vice-Patron of the Darwin Cricket Club.