Dan commenced studying law over half a century ago and has enjoyed a long and varied career in the profession, first as a solicitor and then at the NSW Bar where he was appointed Senior Counsel in 2004.
Dan was a Crown Prosecutor for many years and developed an expertise in criminal law and in mental health law which he furthered during a Churchill Fellowship in which he examined forensic mental health systems in the United States and Canada. He has prosecuted all kinds of serious offences including homicides, drug offences and many other crimes.
Dan was a member of the NSW Mental Health Review Tribunal for 8 years and was President of the Tribunal from 2012 – 2016 and an Acting Judge of the District Court of NSW. He has presided at more than a thousand hearings of Civil and Forensic cases before the Tribunal.
Dan was a member of the Minister for Mental Health’s Committee for the Establishment of the NSW Mental Health Commission which led to the creation of that Commission in 2012. He is currently a member of the Expert Advisory Group to the 2024 Statutory Review of the NSW Mental Health Commission.
In 2018 Dan Howard was appointed Commissioner of the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug ‘Ice’. The Inquiry ran for 14 months and the final Report was delivered to the Governor and Premier of NSW in January 2020. In response to the Inquiry, the NSW Government in September 2022 allocated half a billion dollars toward improving resources and implementing many of the Inquiry’s recommendations.
Dan has held academic positions, as a Professor and later as a Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Law at the University of Wollongong, and as a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales where he taught ‘Psychiatry and the Criminal Law’ in the Masters of Forensic Mental Health Program for many years.
Dan is co-author of the textbook Howard & Westmore’s ‘Crime and Mental Health Law in NSW’ (currently in its third edition) and wrote the text ‘R v Milat – a case study in cross-examination’ – based on the observations he made as a member of the prosecution team in the trial of the serial murderer Ivan Milat.
Although now retired from practice, Dan remains an advocate for drug law and policy reform, and is a NSW Patron of the Justice Reform Initiative.
