Hi Alexander,
You're not mentioning which version of jBPM you're using, but in the user guide for version 3.2.x (http://docs.jboss.com/jbpm/v3.2/userguide/html/persistence.html#isolationlevelofthejdbcconnection) you can read the following:
"Make sure that the database isolation level that you configure for your JDBC connection is at least READ_COMMITTED.
Almost all features run OK even with READ_UNCOMMITTED (isolation level 0 and the only isolation level supported by HSQLDB). But race conditions might occur in the job executor and with synchronizing multiple tokens."
So that's quite clear in itself. But if you want a little more background, you can read this JIRA issue (JBPM-983), in which Tom Baeyens explains about the underlying reasoning for this persistence aspect.
Regards,
Maurice