Yes, there's a potential race between the test and the set. It's "safe" in the sense that the mutex is held across each access, but it might overwrite a change made by another thread.
This is a dummy example. Probably not a very good one
jss::update_guard is the companion to
jss::synchronized_value that allows safe accesses across multiple statements:
jss::synchronized_value<std::string> sv;
void bar(){
jss::update_guard<std::string> guard(sv);
if(guard->empty()){
*guard="hello"; // no potential for a race here.
}
}