A caveat. A dedicated scanner will generally perform better as a scanner than a ham radio transceiver. As a long time ham radio op and even longer scanner listener, I can tell you that I've tried both. As long as the frequencies you want to scan are near a ham band, a transceiver will work very well. Even though many new ham radios offer extensive receive coverage, they don't guarantee their specs outside the ham bands. Example, my Icom 706 MkIIG can receive California Highway Patrol frequencies in the 39-42Mhz range, but the sensitivity is poor. On the other hand, it does very well with our local fire departments in the 153-156Mhz range. Other things that scanners do better include locking out channels. My Yaesu VX-6R requires that you stop scanning, select the channel to be locked out, press <f>+<Set>, select Skip, press Set again, select On, press PTT and then return to the memory made and resume scanning. On a scanner you just press the L/O key. Ham radios won't scan trunked systems or receive P25 etc. Long story short, I do use ham radio as scanners for small groups of frequencies close to the ham bands, but I use a dedicated scanner for everything else.
Good luck getting your license.