spring Batch Failure Listener Rollback

I am extending Spring Batch's ItemListenerSupport and overwriting onProcessError for dealing with error states. My problem is, I was expecting to be able to write to the database as part of my handling, but it seems its being included in the transaction for the batch and being rolled back. Is there a way to get it to do the rollback before and allow onProcessError to update the db? Or is there some other way I should be handling this?

thanks!